e sought my
counsel.

"I did not see him for four years--did not wish to.... And he
vanished completely.... Four years!--just a welcome blank!"

Her shoulders lifted and a little shiver went over her.

"But even a blank like that can become unendurable. To be always
dragging at a chain, and not knowing where it leads to...." Her
hand slipped from the gold cross on her breast and fell to the other
in her lap, which it clutched tightly. "Four years.... I tried to
make myself believe that he was gone forever--was dead. It was
wicked of me."

My murmur of polite dissent led her to repeat her words.

"Yes, and even worse than that. During the past month I have
actually prayed that he might be dead.... I shall be punished for it."

I ventured no rejoinder to these words of self-condemnation. Joyce,
I reflected, mundanely, had clearly swept her off her feet in the
ardour of their first meeting and instant love.

"It must be a great relief to you," I murmured at length, "to have
it all definitely settled at last."

"If I could only feel that it was!"

I turned in amazement, to see her leaning a little forward, her
hands still tightly clasped in her lap, and her eyes fixed upon the
distant horizon where the red spark of Lakalatcha's stertorous
breathing flamed and died away. Her breast rose and fell, as if
timed to the throbbing of that distant flare. "I want you to take me
to that island--to-morrow."

"Why, surely, Miss Stanleigh," I burst forth, "there can't be any
reasonable doubt. Leavitt's mind may be a little flighty--he may
have embroidered his story with a few gratuitous details; but
Farquharson's books and things--the material evidence of his having
lived there--"

"And having died there?"

"Surely Leavitt wouldn't have fabricated that! If you had talked
with him--"

"I should not care to talk with Mr. Leavitt," Miss Stanleigh cut me
short. "I want only to go and see--if he _is_ Mr. Leavitt."

"If he _is_ Mr. Leavitt!" For a moment I was mystified, and then in
a sudden flash I understood. "But that's pre-posterous--impossible!"

I tried to conceive of Leavitt in so monstrous a role, tried to
imagine the missing Farquharson still in the flesh and beguiling
Major Stanleigh and myself with so outlandish a story, devising all
that ingenious detail to trick us into a belief in his own death. It
would indeed have argued a warped mind, guided by some unfathomable
purpose.

"I devoutly hope you are right,