begins----

* * * * *

"Oh!" breathed the girl, exasperated. "Sengoun is a fool!"

Neeland looked up quickly from his letter; then his face altered, and
he rose; but Rue Carew was already on her feet; and she had lost most
of her colour--and her presence of mind, too, it seemed, for Neeland's
arms were half around her, and her hands were against his shoulders.

Neither of them spoke; and he was already amazed and rather scared at
his own incredible daring--already terribly afraid of this slender,
fragrant creature who stood rigid and silent within the circle of his
arm, her head lowered, her little, resisting hands pressed
convulsively against his breast.

And after a long time the pressure against his breast slowly relaxed;
her restless fingers moved nervously against his shoulders, picked at
the lapels of his coat, clung there as he drew her head against his
breast.

The absurd beating of his heart choked him as he stammered her name;
he dropped his head beside her hot and half hidden cheek. And, after a
long, long time, her face stirred on his breast, turned a very little
toward him, and her young lips melted against his.

So they stood through the throbbing silence in the slowly darkening
room, while the street outside echoed with the interminable trample of
passing cavalry, and the dim capital lay like a phantom city under the
ghostly lances of the searchlights as though probing all Heaven to the
very feet of God in search of reasons for the hellish crime now
launched against the guiltless Motherland.

And high among the planets sped the dark star, Erlik, unseen by men,
rushing through viewless interstellar space, hurled out of nothing by
the Prince of Hell into the nothing toward which all Hell is speeding,
too; and whither it shall one day fade and disappear and pass away
forever.

* * * * *

"My darling----"

"Oh, Jim--I have loved you all my life," she whispered. And her young
arms crept up and clung around his neck.

"My darling Rue--my little Rue Carew----"

Outside the window an officer also spoke through the unbroken clatter
of passing horsemen which filled the whole house with a hollow roar.
But she heard her lover's voice alone as in a hushed and magic world;
and in her girl's enchanted ears his words were the only sounds that
stirred a heavenly quiet that reigned between the earth and stars.

Popu