ng within me I could not speak. My voice seemed dried dead
in my throat. No words came before my mind that I could use.

Dawn was creeping slowly into the room. The hideous black night was
over. Pale light, very soft and grey, but overpowering, was stealing
in, mingling with the electric gold glare it was so soon to kill. It
seemed to me like that mysterious, impalpable spirit we call love that
is overpowering, dominant over everything, before which the false
glare of the fires of sense pale into nothingness.

"Trevor," she said at last, breaking the silence of the pale, misty
room, "are you glad I decided as I did? You must do just what you
like; I only felt I could not do anything against you."

I turned and drew her wholly into my arms, and at that warm, living
contact my voice came back to me.

"You are my life, my soul, and you ask if I am glad you've come back
to me? There is nothing in the world for me really but you. Everything
else is dust and ashes, that can be swept away by the lightest
transient wind. You are the very life in my veins, and you must be
mine always, as you have been from the very first."

I pressed my lips down on hers with all the force of that fury of
triumph which rose within me. I did not want her answer. I merely
wanted to force my words between her lips, to drive them home to her
heart. She was my regained possession, and the joy of it was like
madness. She put her arms round my neck and lay quite still and
passive, close pressed against my heart, and our souls seemed to meet
and hold communion with each other and there was no need of any more
words.

PART FOUR

THE CRIMSON NIGHT

CHAPTER VIII

LOSS

We had left town and come down to the country. Viola had not seemed
quite so well in the last three months since the night of our
reconciliation, and even here in the country she did not seem to
regain her colour and her usual spirits.

She declared, however, there was nothing the matter with her, and we
had been intensely happy.

One morning when we came down to our rather late breakfast I found a
long, thin, curiously addressed letter lying by my plate.

Viola took it up laughingly, and then I saw her suddenly turn pale,
and she laid it back on the table as if the touch of it hurt her.

"Oh, Trevor, that is a letter from Suzee! I am sure it is! Why should
it come now, just when we are so happy?"

I looked at her in surprise, and took up the letter to cut i