ent led her to repeat her words.

"Yes, and even worse than that. During the past month I have actually
prayed that he might be dead.... I shall be punished for it."

I ventured no rejoinder to these words of self-condemnation. Joyce, I
reflected, mundanely, had clearly swept her off her feet in the ardor of
their first meeting and instant love.

"It must be a great relief to you," I murmured at length, "to have it
all definitely settled at last."

"If I could only feel that it was!"

I turned in amazement, to see her leaning a little forward, her hands
still tightly clasped in her lap, and her eyes fixed upon the distant
horizon where the red spark of Lakalatcha's stertorous breathing flamed
and died away. Her breast rose and fell, as if timed to the throbbing of
that distant flare.

"I want you to take me to that island--to-morrow."

"Why, surely, Miss Stanleigh," I burst forth, "there can't be any
reasonable doubt. Leavitt's mind may be a little flighty--he may have
embroidered his story with a few gratuitous details; but Farquharson's
books and things--the material evidence of his having lived there----"

"And having died there?"

"Surely Leavitt wouldn't have fabricated that! If you had talked with
him----"

"I should not care to talk with Mr. Leavitt," Miss Stanleigh cut me
short. "I want only to go and see--if he _is_ Mr. Leavitt."

"If he _is_ Mr. Leavitt!" For a moment I was mystified, and then in a
sudden flash I understood. "But that's preposterous--impossible!"

I tried to conceive of Leavitt in so monstrous a rA'le, tried to imagine
the missing Farquharson still in the flesh and beguiling Major Stanleigh
and myself with so outlandish a story, devising all that ingenious
detail to trick us into a belief in his own death. It would indeed have
argued a warped mind, guided by some unfathomable purpose.

"I devoutly hope you are right," Miss Stanleigh was saying, with
deliberation. "But it is not preposterous, and it is not impossible--if
you had known Mr. Farquharson as I have."

It was a discreet confession. She wished me to understand--without the
necessity of words. My surmise was that she had met and married
Farquharson, whoever he was, under the spell of some momentary
infatuation, and that he had proved himself to be an unspeakable brute
whom she had speedily abandoned.

"I am determined to go to Muloa, Mr. Barnaby," she announced, with
decision. "I want you to make the arrangements, and