terer memory to me than it could ever be to you."

"Shall we go back?" she said evenly.

"Yes, if you wish."

They walked back together in silence; a jolly company claimed them for
their table; Geraldine laughingly accepted a glass of champagne, turning
her back squarely on Duane.

Naida and Kathleen came across.

"We waited for you as long as we could," said his pretty sister,
smothering a yawn. "I'm horribly sleepy. Duane, it's three o'clock.
Would you mind taking me across to the house?"

He cast a swift, anxious glance at Geraldine; her vivid colour, the
splendour of her eyes, her feverish laughter were ominous. With her were
Gray and Sylvia, rather noisy in their gaiety, and the boisterous Pink
'uns, and Jack Dysart, lingering near, the make-up on his face in
ghastly contrast to his ashen pallor and his fixed and unvaried grin.

"I'm waiting, Duane," said Naida plaintively.

So he turned away with her through the woods, where one by one the
brilliant lantern flames were dying out, and where already in the east a
silvery lustre heralded the coming dawn.

* * * * *

When he returned, Geraldine was gone. At the house somebody said she had
come in with Kathleen, not feeling well.

"The trouble with that girl," said a man whom he did not know, "is that
she's had too much champagne."

"You lie," said Duane quietly. "Is that perfectly plain to you?"

For a full minute the young man stood rigid, crimson, glaring at Duane.
Then, having the elements of decency in him, he said:

"I don't know who you are, but you are perfectly right. I did lie. And
I'll see that nobody else does."

CHAPTER XII

THE LOVE OF THE GODS

Two days later the majority of the people had left Roya-Neh, and the
remainder were preparing to make their adieux to the young chatelaine by
proxy; for Geraldine had kept her room since the night of the masked
fete, and nobody except Kathleen and Dr. Bailey had seen her.

"Fashionable fidgets," said Dr. Bailey, in answer to amiable inquiries;
"the girl has been living on her nerves, like the rest of you, only she
can't stand as much as you can."

To Duane he said, in reply to persistent questions:

"As a plain and unromantic proposition, young man, it may be her liver.
God alone knows with what young women stuff their bodies in those
bucolic solitudes."

To Kathleen he said, after questioning her and listening in silence to
her guarded replies: