ime, and when she did it was uneasily. But
the bed was an immense one, and she was not near him. There was no sleep
for him--not even for an hour. Once, in exhaustion, he almost rolled
over into the poppies of unconsciousness; but he came back with a start
and a groan to sentient life again, and kept feeling, feeling along the
wall of purpose for a masterly way to kill.

At dawn it came, suddenly spreading out before him like a picture. He
saw himself standing at the head of the flume out there by the Mill
Cartier with his hand on the lever. Below him in the empty flume was
the master-carpenter giving a last inspection to the repairs. Beyond the
master-carpenter--far beyond--was the great mill-wheel! Behind himself,
Jean Jacques, was the river held back by the dam; and if the lever was
opened,--the river would sweep through the raised gates down the flume
to the millwheel--with the man. And then the wheel would turn and turn,
and the man would be in the wheel.

It was not obvious; it was original; and it looked safe for Jean
Jacques. How easily could such an "accident" occur!

CHAPTER IX. "MOI-JE SUIS PHILOSOPHE"

The air was like a mellow wine, and the light on the landscape was full
of wistfulness. It was a thing so exquisite that a man of sentiment like
Jean Jacques in his younger days would have wept to see. And the feeling
was as palpable as the seeing; as in the early spring the new life which
is being born in the year, produces a febrile kind of sorrow in the
mind. But the glow of Indian summer, that compromise, that after-thought
of real summer, which brings her back for another good-bye ere she
vanishes for ever--its sadness is of a different kind. Its longing has a
sharper edge; there stir in it the pangs of discontent; and the mind and
body yearn for solace. It is a dangerous time, even more dangerous than
spring for those who have passed the days of youth.

It had proved dangerous to Carmen Barbille. The melancholy of the
gorgeously tinted trees, the flights of the birds to the south, the
smell of the fallow field, the wind with the touch of the coming
rains--these had given to a growing discontent with her monotonous
life the desire born of self-pity. In spite of all she could do she was
turning to the life she had left behind in Cadiz long ago.

It seemed to her that Jean Jacques had ceased to care for the charms
which once he had so proudly proclaimed. There was in her the strain of
the religi