laying about the corners of her mouth. In the smoky interminable depths
of the Solomon Island jungle I had crushed that smile out of my life,
for ever I had thought. I had deliberately erased it from my memory, and
at night beside the smudge fire, when my eyes closed for an instant and
that beautiful imperious face peeped at me from out of the mazes of
recollection, I would open my eyes and stared fixedly at the misshapen
headhunters who were my sole companions in that wilderness. "These," I
would say, "are the kindred of us both. Their women smile as she smiles,
and the men respond to it as I used to respond." And with that thought
in my head I would fall asleep and not dream.

"Jim," she said with abrupt irrelevance, "you've changed. You usen't to
be like that before. You're different somehow ... cynical, I think."

"That's more than likely," I agreed. "I'm learning to hit back. And now
if you'll excuse me," I ran on before she had time to answer, "I'll just
drop in with this parcel."

Then without more ado I turned on my heel and knocked at Bryce's door.

CHAPTER IV.

THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT.

"I've got those maps you wanted," I remarked as Bryce opened the door,
"and I hope I haven't kept you waiting too long."

"You haven't," he said with a smile. "As a matter-of-fact I've been
otherwise occupied. I've had a visitor."

"A visitor?" I said guardedly, though what on earth there was to guard
against was more than I could have said just then. Some cross-grained
streak in my nature made me both cantankerous and suspicious, and while
the mood was on me I would have contradicted or queried the word of an
archangel.

"Yes," Bryce replied. "The lady you met in the passage. I gather that
she knows you."

"We knew each other years ago," I said shortly. In a flash the meaning
of the conversation I had overheard burst on me. I began to perceive
that her presence in the house was due in part at least to me. Well, if
he fancied he was going to patch up our old love affair he had
undertaken a bigger job than he thought. For two pins I would have told
him, had he uttered another word, that there was one matter in which I
would brook no man's interference, and that even the ties that bound him
to my father were not strong enough to allow him to settle what was
nobody's affair but mine. But, with even greater tact than I believed he
possessed, he switched the conversation on to quite another subject and
talked to m