ulder, looking
mischievously down at him, lovely, fresh, perfect as the Cherokee roses
that spread their creamy, flawless beauty across the wall behind her.

Imperceptibly her expression changed to soft friendliness, to
tenderness, to a hint of deeper emotion; and her lids drooped a little,
then opened gravely under the quick caress of his eyes; and very gently
she moved her head from side to side as reminder and refusal.

"Another man's wife," she said deliberately.... "Thy neighbour's
wife.... That's what we've done!"

Like a cut of a whip her words brought him upright to confront her, his
blood tingling on the quick edge of anger.

For always, deep within him, lay that impotent anger latent; always his
ignorance of this man haunted him like the aftermath of an ugly dream.
But of the man himself she had never spoken since that first day in the
wilderness. And then she had not named him.

Her face had grown very serious, but her eyes remained unfathomable
under his angry gaze.

"Is there any reason to raise that spectre between us?" he demanded.

"Dear, has it ever been laid?" she asked sorrowfully.

The muscles in his cheeks tightened and his eyes narrowed unpleasantly.
Only the one feature saved the man from sullen commonness in his
suppressed anger--and that was his boyish mouth, clean, sweet, nobly
moulded, giving the lie to the baffled brutality gleaming in the eyes.
And the spark died out as it had come, subdued, extinguished when he
could no longer sustain the quiet surprise of her regard.

"How very, very young you are after all," she said gently. "Come nearer.
Lift your sulky, wicked head. Now ask my pardon for not understanding."

"I ask it.... But when you speak of him--"

"Hush. He is only a shadow to you--scarcely more to me. He must remain
so. Do you not understand that I wish him to remain a shadow to you--a
thing without substance--without a name?"

He bent his head, nodding almost imperceptibly.

"Garry?"

He looked up in response.

"There is something else--if I could only say it.... I might if you
would close your eyes." ... She hesitated, half-fearful, then drew his
head down on her knees, daintily, using her finger-tips only in the
operation.

"Are you listening to what I am trying to tell you?"

"Yes, very intently."

"Then--it's about my being afraid--of love.... Are you listening?... It
is very difficult for me to say this.... It is about my being afraid....
I used to be w