e traveller pushed his cup from him, shook the ashes from his cigar,
and answered slowly:--

"That there is something stronger than vengeance, Louise--something
higher."

"You mean mercy?"

"Something infinitely more powerful--the Primeval."

The Baron twisted his short neck and faced the speaker. Greenough rose
to his feet, relighted his cigar at the silver lamp, and said with some
impatience:--

"I don't understand your meaning, Bayard; make it clear, will you?"

"You don't understand, Greenough, because you have not suffered--not as
some men I know, not as one man I have in mind."

Mme. Constantin slipped from her cushions, crossed to where Bayard sat,
and nestled on a low ottoman beside him.

"Is it something you haven't told me, Bayard?" she asked, looking up
into his face. These two had been friends for years. Sometimes in his
wanderings the letters came in bunches; at other times the silence
continued for months.

"Yes, something I haven't told you, Louise--not all of it. I remember
writing you about his arrival at Babohunga, and what a delightful fellow
he was, but I couldn't tell you the rest of it. I will now, and I want
Greenough to listen.

"He was, I think, the handsomest young fellow that I ever saw--tall,
broad shouldered, well built, curly hair cut close to his head, light,
upturned mustache, white teeth, clear, fair skin--really you'd hardly
meet another such young fellow anywhere. He had come up from Zanzibar
and had pushed on to my camp, hoping, he said, to join some caravan
going into the interior. He explained that he was an officer in the
Belgian army, that he had friends further up, near Lake Mantumba,
and that he came for sport alone. I, of course, was glad to take him
in--glad that year to take anybody in who was white, especially
this young fellow, who was such a contrast to the customary
straggler--escaped convict, broken-down gambler, disgraced officer, Arab
trader, and other riffraff that occasionally passed my way.

"And then, again, his manners, his smile, the easy grace of his
movements--even his linen, bearing his initials and a crown--something
he never referred to--all showed him to be a man accustomed to the
refinements of society. Another reason was his evident inexperience with
the life about him. His ten days' march from the landing below to my
camp had been a singularly lucky one. They generally plunge into the
forest in perfect health, only to crawl back to the rive