ach you! What do you suppose has
become of that other one whom you met at the _weng_ into the hills? Do
you imagine my men were not in his camp? Every inch of the way you two
were watched.

"And what has become of your prudence? You who defied me, who escaped
me--undone by a woman! She is why you are here. Because you are such
a fool you shall die. I might have relented. I thought you were proof
against love. Is any one? Is any one proof against it but me? Ah----"

He looked eagerly beyond Peter, and Peter heard a frightened sob, then
a little cry, as the door closed heavily.

CHAPTER XV

She flew across the room to him, and pressed her hands to his cheeks.
Her eyes were sparkling with tears, and her face was very pale. Only
her lips, which were everlastingly bright, gave color to that
distressed young face.

"Peter!" she moaned. "Oh, I was so afraid!" She lowered her voice.
"What is to become of us?"

He looked down at her and forced a smile to his lips.

"We who are about to die----" he began grimly.

She gave him a twisted smile as his arms tightened about her. He loved
her for that courage.

With his arm at her waist he turned. He had observed that the Gray
Dragon had spoken truly as regarded the armed coolie at his back.

Their captor bent forward and fixed upon them the most curious of
glances. His merciless, green eyes ran from Eileen's tumbled chestnut
hair to her small, tan boots--then he regarded Peter with the same
intensity, and thereupon he seemed to be weighing the doomed lovers as
a unit, or as an idea.

A devilish smile cracked his lips.

"So this is love?" he cackled. "This is the young woman to whom you
have thrown your life away--after most splendid resistance--you, Peter
the Brazen! Do you still love her?" He pointed a crooked forefinger
at Eileen. "Tell me, would you desert him, in this first flush of your
maiden love, for a handsomer man--and steal his gold, after he laid the
earth at your feet? Would you do that?"

Methodically the talons stroked the sea-weed mustache.

"You are too anxious for death. You are romantic. Youth does have
such ideas. Even I, _Chuh-seng_, have such notions. Death? Why does
your little mind single out such simple punishment--you--lovers?
Romantically you long for death, because in the next world you would
come together again--in the lover's eternity of heaven.

"But I have a far more imaginative scheme. Separation! H