as always waiting for a curtain to rise which did not rise, for a voice
to speak which gave no sound.

Yet since Carnac's coming back there had appeared a slight change in
her, a bountiful, eager alertness, a sense of wonder and experiment,
adding new interest to her personality. Carnac was conscious of this
increased vitality, was impressed and even provoked by it. Somehow he
felt--for he had the telepathic mind--that the girl admired and liked
Tarboe. He did not stop to question how or why she should like two
people so different as Tarboe and himself.

The faint colour of the crimsoning maples was now in her cheek; the
light of the autumn evening was in her eyes; the soft vitality of
September was in her motions. She was attractively alive. Her hair waved
back from her forehead with natural grace; her small feet, with
perfect ankles, made her foothold secure and sedately joyous. Her
brown hand--yet not so brown after all--held her hat lightly, and was,
somehow, like a signal out of a world in which his hopes were lost for
the present.

She was dearer to him than all the rest of the world; and he had in his
hand what kept them apart--a sentence of death, unless he escaped from
the wanton calling him to fulfil duties into which he had been tricked.
Luzanne Larue had a terrible hold over him. He gripped the letter in
his pocket as a Hopi Indian does the body of a poisonous snake. The rosy
sunset gave the girl's face a reflected spiritual glamour; it made her,
suddenly, a bewildering figure. Somehow, she seemed a great distance
from him--as one detached and unfamiliar.

He suddenly felt she knew more than it was possible she should know. As
she flashed an inquiry into his eyes, it was as though she said: "Why
don't you tell me everything, and I will help you?" Or, was it: "Why
don't you tell me everything and end it all?" He longed to press her
to his breast, as he had once done in the woods when Denzil had been
injured, but that was not possible. The thought of that far-off day made
him say to her, rather futilely:

"How is Denzil? How is Denzil?"

There was swift surprise in her face. She seemed dumbfounded, and then
she said:

"Denzil! He's all right, but he does not like your Mr. Tarboe."

"My Mr. Tarboe! Where do I come in?"

"Well, he's got what you ought to have had," was the reply. "What you
would have had, weren't you a foolish fellow."

"I still don't understand how he is my Mr. Tarboe."

"Well, he