n sown with gold flecks, a skin so delicate that one felt that a kiss
would tear it!

I do not know from what source I have that expression but it attaches
itself, out of my memory of descriptive phrases, to Madame Barras. And
it extends itself as wholly descriptive of her. You will say that the
long and short of this is that I was in love with Madame Barras, but I
point you a witness in Major Carrington.

He had the same impressions, and he had but one passion in his life, a
distant worship of my sister that burned steadily even here at the
end of life. During the few evenings that Madame Barras had been in
to dinner with us, he sat in his chair beyond my sister in the
drawing-room, perfect in his early-Victorian manner, while Madame Barras
and I walked on the great terrace, or sat outside.

One had a magnificent sweep of the world, at night, from that terrace.
It looked out over the forest of pines to the open sea.

Madame Barras confessed to the pull of this vista. She asked me at what
direction the Atlantic entered, and when she knew, she kept it always in
her sight.

It had a persisting fascination for her. At all times and in nearly any
position, she was somehow sensible of this vista; she knew the lights
almost immediately, and the common small craft blinking about. To-night
she had sat for a long time in nearly utter silence here. There was a
faint light on the open sea as she got up to take her leave of us; what
would it be she wondered.

I replied that it was some small craft coming in.

"A fishing-boat?"

"Hardly that," I said, "from its lights and position it will be some
swifter power-boat and, I should say, not precisely certain about the
channel."

I have been drawn here into reminiscence that did not, at the time,
detain me in the hall. What my sister had discovered to me, following
Major Carrington's remark, left me distinctly uneasy. It was very nearly
two miles to the village, the road was wholly forest and there would be
no house on the way; for my father, with an utter disregard for cost,
had sought the seclusion of a large acreage when he had built this
absurdly elaborate villa on Mount Desert Island.

Besides I was in no mood for sleep.

And, over all probability, there might be some not entirely imaginary
danger to Madame Barras. Not precisely the danger presented in Major
Carrington's pleasantry, but the always possible danger to one who is
carrying a sum of money about. It would b