o ask
me."

* * * * *

For the space of a week Honor held inflexibly aloof; and the effort it
cost her seemed out of all proportion to the mildness of the
punishment inflicted. It is an old story--the inevitable price paid by
love that is strong enough to chastise. But this great paradox, the
corner-stone of man's salvation, is a stumbling-block to lesser
natures. In Evelyn's eyes Honor was merely cruel, and her own week of
independence a nightmare of helpless irritation. She made one effort
at remonstrance; and its futility crushed her to earth.

During the evening of their talk the matter had been tacitly avoided
between them; but when, on the following morning, Honor laid books and
bills upon the davenport where Evelyn sat writing, she caught
desperately at the girl's hand.

"Honor, it isn't fair. How _can_ you be so unkind?"

Honor drew her hand decisively away.

"Please let the subject alone," she said coolly. "If you persist in
talking of it, you will drive me to go and sit in my own room--that's
all."

A week later, however, when she returned from a ride to find Evelyn
again at the detested davenport, her head bowed upon her arms, like a
flower broken with the wind, all the inherent motherhood in her rose
up and overflowed. Hastily crossing the room she knelt down beside the
small tragic figure and kissed a pearl-white fragment of forehead; the
only spot available at the moment. "Poor darling!" she whispered. "Is
it really as bad as all that?"

Caresses from Honor were so rare that for an instant Evelyn was taken
aback; then she laid her head on the girl's shoulder with a sigh of
pure content.

"Oh, Honor! the world seems all broken to pieces when _you_ are unkind
to me!"

Honor kissed her again.

"I won't be unkind to you any more; and we'll just forget from this
minute that it ever happened at all."

But to forget is not to undo; and during their brief estrangement
Evelyn Desmond had added a link to the chain of Fate, whose strongest
coils are most often wrought by our own unskilful fingers.

CHAPTER X.

A SQUARE BARGAIN.

"The faith of men that ha' brothered men,
By more than easy breath;
And the eyes o' men that ha' read wi' men,
In the open books of death."
--KIPLING.

"Behold! Captain Sahib,--there where the sky touches earth. In the
space of half an hour we arrive."

Desmond lifted sun-wear