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 impossible,' said Marthe Ludérac. She did not look at him, but straight before her.

And even as he had spoken, a doubt had fallen upon him. Jill might bear it; but how could he? How could he cut Jill out of his life? The deep paternal instincts interwoven in long-rooted marriage cried out against him. How leave his wife, his child, his dear, dear Jill? It was impossible. He could not contradict Marthe Ludérac.

They crossed the width of the garden, under the wall. Here black currant bushes grew and their spicy odour filled the hot air. They turned the corner and went under lilac branches that cast a shadow at their feet.

'Then'—Graham lowered his voice and did not look at her as he walked, evenly, carefully beside her—'we must be secret lovers. Here. Now. Before I leave Buissac. It's torment for us, whichever way we turn; but that's the best torment. When we part we shall have had each other.'

They walked on steadily, emerging from the lilacs; visible once more to the sentinel skull.

And Marthe Ludérac said nothing. She was silent. Horror-stricken? Frozen in repudiation? He shot a glance at her. White, fixed, considering, her eyes bent on the ground, she walked beside him; but it was not in horror or repulsion. As Graham felt and saw the substance of her silence, the blood surged again before his eyes and he heard the pounding of his heart. 'You will?' he said. 'To-night? Every night before I go?'

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 Still she was silent. He could hardly believe in her beautiful, terrible silence. They reached the house again before she spoke. And they were the same words as before: 'It is impossible.'

'No; no! Not impossible!' Her silence had given him an immense advantage. It was as if he had felt her come into his arms. She could not now take herself back. 'Not impossible. I would come when the others are asleep. I know the way. And I would guard you. No one would ever know. I can stay on in Buissac. Madame de Lamouderie's portrait is our screen. Even now, up there, she does not dream of what is between us. I will keep it from her; from Jill. We are strong enough; both of us. And the one impossible thing is that we should not love one another—completely.'

His eyes were on her, and as she felt them her faint, strange, violent blush answered him. Her face was inundated with her awareness of him and with her pain. And cursing himself for his grossness, his brutality, he saw that it was pain; and then, as she walked on in her silence, that she did not shrink from it, or from him. Overwhelmed, even desperate she might be, but it seemed to him that she resented nothing; that she saw as plainly as he did their necessity and their resources. Only after the silence had grown long, after they had walked and turned again, did he hear her speak. A faint, a rigid voice. 'No; no,' she said; and the words seemed forced from her. 'I could not bear it.'

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 'Do you mean secret loving?—or parting afterwards?'

'I can see you go. I thought that you were gone. I can see you go, now.'

'Can you? I can't see myself. It will have to be secret loving, unless you will come with me.'

'We know that we must part. That is our completion. There is no choice,' she said. 'I will not go with you and have Jill left. I will not love you secretly—and part from you afterwards.—No; no! That I could not bear!' she cried passionately, startling him with the sudden cry, not looking at him.

He held himself from seizing her. 'Marthe!—Listen. My darling. It will be easier. One can die if one has lived. You don't understand. How should you?'

'I do understand. I do. I will not have it so.'

Her hand as she spoke so passionately, though in so low a tone, had clenched itself against her chest as though she drew back from an invisible antagonist. The watcher up above them must wonder to see that desperate gesture and, lifting his eyes to the window, Graham saw that it was a wonder past endurance. Madame de Lamouderie flung wide the sash. She leaned out.

'Marthe! Have you forgotten the hour? Do you not know that it is long past the time for our ''déjeuner! ' '' she screamed.

Marthe Ludérac looked up at her almost unseeingly. As awareness came, it was a weary, an enduring awareness. She bowed her head, though she made

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 noreply to the screaming summons; but as they walked towards the house, she said in a voice changed, charged, hurried: 'There is no more to say, of ourselves. Only one thing I have to ask of you. The old woman there: do not part from her in enmity.'

'Don't speak to me of her!' Graham exclaimed in bitter exasperation. 'You know who it was who told that story of you. There is more to say of ourselves and I do not intend to waste these moments on her.'

'You have misled her. You have been cruel to her. You knew what she was when you came and saw her. You cannot go now leaving her so wretched.'

'No. I don't intend to go. I have her portrait to finish. If I'm decent to her, you'll know why.'

'No, no; I beg of you,' said Marthe Ludérac, standing still before the door and fixing her eyes upon him. 'Do not speak so. It is useless. I refuse what you offer. I refuse it all. We are not to meet again.'

'Marthe—Marthe—Marthe,' Graham murmured. He stood and gazed upon her. 'Be merciful,' he said. 'Tell me that you will see me—if only once again. I can't live without seeing you.'

'It makes it worse. It is a weakness. And it makes it worse,' she said, her eyes on his. 'But go. Go now, and I will see you once again.' She turned from him and went into the house before him.

Joseph waited in the hall. He seemed to have been biding his time, for, as his young mistress entered, followed by the Englishman, he hurried towards the front door and opened it with hasty fingers and stood

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 there, holding it back, keeping his eyes on Graham until he had passed out.

The luncheon hour was long over when Graham reached the Ecu d'Or. Monsieur Michon, who served him, told him that Madame had come in to lunch, but had immediately gone out again, in the car. 'And we shall have a storm this afternoon, Monsieur,' he said. 'I warned Madame not to go too far.'

When Graham had taken some food he went up to their sitting-room. On the table lay a note with 'Dick' written on the envelope. He opened it and read:

Graham read this over several times before its meaning reached him. It was as if he had outstripped time, he was so far ahead of all that Jill had to tell him. He had outstripped time, but Jill's comprehension, Jill's courage and loyalty, followed close on the trail of his flaming course. It was evident to him, as he tried to retrace his own steps and to mark where Jill had come upon them, that he was to spare her nothing.

'But that's all to the good, isn't it,' Graham mut-

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 tered, trying to think, as he held Jill's note. There'll be nothing to explain.'

Was it all to the good? He could think no longer—of Jill, or of Marthe. The heavy day pressed on him like a pall and he had not slept for an hour the night before. He went upstairs to their room, flung himself on his bed, and fell, almost at once, into a profound and exhausted slumber.

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'M like the Wandering Jew,' thought Jill as, on the afternoon of that blazing day, she raced her car through the spring landscape. Jill could never, in the most tragic moments, address herself in tragic terms, and it steadied her nerves now to see herself in this comic, if dolorous, aspect of a creature who must keep in movement from dawn to dusk. For Dick might return at any moment to the Ecu d'Or and she could not see him yet. He must rest, and she must rest; a night must pass over them before they could speak to one another. She, too, had hardly slept, and until night she would keep away from him. Ah, if only she and Dick could, both of them, go to sleep for days and days and wake to find everything understood between them without one word. Her very flesh shrank from the searing thought of what they might have to say to one another.

So she drove. She took the valley road up towards the gorges and climbed the mountain to the great tablelands, there to make the widest circle of all her adventurings, through the birch forests, down into gently wooded valleys, where apple-blossom was breaking into bud, up to the plain once more and past a chain of lakes that glittered in the sunlight under the sultry sky like polished steel. Everything was splendid, but

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 nothing beautiful this afternoon, she thought, and the white heat beat up from the road into her eyes and the yellow heat from the sun beat down into her brain. She paused at a wayside buvette to raise her hood so that she might drive in shelter and went inside and sat down at a rustic table on the sanded floor to rest and drink a glass of beer. The woman who came to serve her had eyes swollen with weeping, and as Jill looked up at her kindly, she told her suddenly that her little girl lay dead in the next room. Would Madame like to see her—she was as beautiful as an angel. Jill did not want to see her at all, but she followed the mother into the dark, airless inner room and saw lying on the bed, a candle burning beside it, the pathetic small body; very beautiful, indeed, with waxen face and earnest, gentle smile. The mother stood, holding her apron to her lips, gazing and weeping, and Jill felt that her own tears fell. It was not only the sight of the dead child that made her cry. Her personal sorrow thus found relief.

Now she went on and came to unknown sign-posts, marking hamlets scattered far inland, with names that smelt of wine and garlic. But the sun had begun to dip down in the sky and she took the turnings to the left so that she should not lose herself too completely. However far away it might be, she was now heading for Buissac.

For some little time she had been aware of ominous noises and falterings in her engine and had disregarded them, and when the car stopped suddenly she got out

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 to find that her magneto was broken. There was nothing for it but to push the car along into a sheltered spot, and find her way back on foot. She took a path running along the edges of a wood where the budding wayside trees gave, at least, a scant shelter. Her face streamed with sweat, and she passed her silk sleeve over her forehead and took off her cap and fanned herself. At the first opening she turned down into the woodland and here, among the trees, she walked for an hour.

Ominously still it was. Not a bird sang. But a brook went beside her, hurrying down to the Dordogne, and Jill stopped to drink at it and to bathe her smarting eyes. 'What a fool I was to let myself cry,' she muttered.

Suddenly, at a turn of the path, she stood still. This was a familiar spot. She was quite near Buissac. It was here that she had come that very morning—oh, how long ago! This was the same brook; that the same stone bridge where she had seen Marthe sitting, exhausted; where Marthe had looked at her with that dark, that heavy look.

Standing there, gazing at the bridge, a tidal wave of suffering suddenly swept all Jill's hard-held courage from her heart, and for a long, suffocating moment it seemed to her that she hated Marthe Ludérac.

What had been the fatal darkness that had underlain their morning encounter if it had not been the knowledge that they were for ever fixed in enmity? Marthe loved Dick. Marthe had taken Dick from her. How

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 could he ever come back to her, when that sorceress had cast her magic glance upon him? Dick was sorry for her now. He loved Marthe, and was sorry for her; as Marthe's father had been sorry for his wife. He had never really loved her; never as he loved Marthe. And as these tumultuous thoughts went through her mind, Jill felt herself dashed to and fro on the horrible surges of the tidal wave, unable to feel herself as anything but that darkness and that suffering. It was as if she had never known herself before; as if her self were all that was left to her and as if it were revealed to her to be mere tumult, darkness, and misery.

She stood there, at the entrance to the descending woodland path, her head bent down, her hands deeply thrust into her pockets. The memory of the dead child's face returned to her; the gentle, earnest look. It had escaped. It was better to escape. Life wasn't worth it. It came to nothing. With all her heart Jill, for that black moment, and for the first time in her happy existence, wished that she were dead.

Suddenly, deep in the silent woodland, far, far off, she heard the inconsequent yet intent note of the chiff-chaff. Not the wood-wren—oh, she was glad it was not the beautiful song—only the chiff-chaff; only something one could bear—like the simple toy put into the weak hands of a convalescent child. Foolish little bird; dear little bird. As she listened to it, it made her think, first, of home; of bells at Easter; and she felt the tidal wave slowly sinking, slowly drawing away, the darkness shallower; the light coming softly through

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 and breathing into her heart once more. And then she remembered Marthe's eyes of resurrection; Marthe's face as, at the gate, on the spring evening when they had first found each other, she had laid Jill's hand against her cheek and said, 'This dear heart will be kind to everything.' How could she have dreamed that the past was spoiled? The past, and Marthe as she had known her in it, was the one sure thing.

She stood there, softly breathing in her convalescence, aged, had she known it, by those moments of experience as decades of her former life could not have aged her, and the last thought that came to her—from the chiff-chaff's song, from the memory of Marthe's face and Marthe's words—was of a hunted fox; and then of a hunted cat. The wretched old lady down there below the woods. What had she been suffering? And was not her suffering the worst of all?

'I must see her,' Jill muttered to herself. And it seemed now clearly the next step. She could not leave Buissac without seeing her; in kindness, if that were possible. She must try to make her own that she had lied, but to make her feel that even if she had lied she was understood, not hated. 'I might have been just as bad myself,' thought Jill. 'We're all one. Just as Marthe said.' She went on down the path towards the Manoir.

As she entered the Manoir gate she heard the half-slumberous yet sinister reverberations of distant thunder. The sound of it was like a great snake dragging itself in dusty rolls and coils along the horizon. She

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 turned to look at the sky, when she had rung, and saw that a vast thunder-cloud had reared its head above the trees, black, magnificent, rimmed against the blue with glittering sunlight. No one answered the bell, and even after she had rung a second time there was a long interval before the door half opened and Joseph peeped out.

'Here I am again, you see, Joseph,' she said. Something in the old man's demeanour affected her unpleasantly. It was almost as if he were unwilling to let her in. 'I've come to take shelter. We're going to have a storm.'

'Mademoiselle has gone out,' said Joseph, still holding the door ajar and peering at Jill with eyes at once furtive and penetrating. 'She is gone to the meadow to fetch up the goat and kid. Madame will perhaps join her there.'

Jill eyed him, pondering. He did not want to let her in. 'It's really Madame la comtesse I've come to see this time,' she said.

'I fear that Madame la comtesse is indisposed to-day,' said Joseph, and the elastic French indisposée, on his lips, was significant of all sorts of warnings. 'Madame will do well not to see her again.'

'Oh, but I must see her before we go away,' said Jill. 'I've not said good-bye to her, and we may be going quite soon.'

'The sooner the better!' said Joseph suddenly; and as Jill gazed at him, astonished and arrested, he put his face close to hers and uttered in a piercing whisper:

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 'Madame la comtesse is a bad old woman. She will bring Madame no good.'

'But none of us are quite bad or quite good, are we, Joseph?' said Jill in an unsteady voice, for Joseph almost frightened her. 'And even if she's very bad indeed, I'm not afraid of her.'

'Yes; some of us are quite bad, and some quite good,' said Joseph. 'Mademoiselle Marthe—has Madame not discovered that she is quite good? Too good—or she would have driven the evil old woman out long ago.'

'Oh—but that would have been so cruel. She couldn't have done that,' Jill murmured, gazing spellbound at Joseph. 'She's been so dreadfully unhappy, hasn't she?'

'' ' Eh, bien! tout le monde a ses misères, ' '' said Joseph with a bitter shrug of the shoulders; 'but some of our calamities are our own fault and some are not. What are the misfortunes of Madame la comtesse to those of Mademoiselle Marthe? Yet she is innocent of all. And we may be sure, Madame, that Madame la comtesse is innocent of nothing.'

'I'm afraid that's true, Joseph. But it makes her more pitiful. That's what Mademoiselle Marthe feels, I know.'

'Yes. That is what she feels. She would give the clothes off her back for any creature for whom she felt pity. It has always been so. See how she dresses; like a peasant, is it not? Yet Mademoiselle Marthe is well-born,' said Joseph, and a passionate resentment, long

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 suppressed, spoke in his voice. 'She is of noble blood—on her mother's side. Yet see how she dresses. Never one sou on herself will she spend when there is that old woman to cosset, to buy sweetmeats for, to tie with pink ribbon. Has Madame ever seen her room? That was Mademoiselle Marthe's work. All muslin and pink ribbon; as a surprise to her on her last birthday. All day long Mademoiselle Marthe worked at it. And I can promise you that it gave pleasure. Yes, she sleeps among the pink ribbons while Mademoiselle Marthe has not a shred of lace on her chemises.'

Jill could hardly repress a smile, even though Joseph touched her so deeply. 'But how well one understands that, Joseph,' she said. 'Who would care for lace on their chemises when there was some one who could be made so happy by pink ribbon? Who would care, I mean, if they were like Mademoiselle Marthe? It's because I know she's like that that I love her so. It's really for Mademoiselle Marthe's sake that I want to see Madame la comtesse.'

Joseph, at this, looked at her for a moment in silence. 'If Madame loves Mademoiselle, the best thing she could do for her would be to leave Buissac,' he then said, slowly.

'But I am going away,' Jill faltered.

'But at once,' said Joseph, his eyes on hers. 'At once. It cannot be too soon. Alone with me, Mademoiselle is safe. She is safe from the old woman when she is alone. She has her own life; she can find happiness. If Madame would go, at once, and persuade

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 Monsieur to go, all would still be well.' And holding the door with his bony old hand, edging himself half outside, Joseph whispered, still more piercingly: 'If Madame would empower me, now, to go in to Madame la comtesse and tell her that she and Monsieur had left Buissac for good—ah—that would be the blow to deal her! That would be to protect Mademoiselle Marthe!'

Jill stood gazing at him. She felt petrified.

Suddenly, within, the drawing-room door opened and behind Joseph she saw that Madame de Lamouderie had emerged into the hall.

'What is it? What are you doing? Whom are you keeping out?—I will report you at once to Mademoiselle Marthe!' she cried in a strange, hoarse voice that Jill had never heard from her before.

Joseph, not replying, stepped back and Jill entered. She could not have made Joseph that promise. For herself it might have been given; but not for Graham, and it was Graham Joseph feared.

'It's I. It's Jill Graham. I've come to see you,' she said.

Madame de Lamouderie stood on the threshold of the drawing-room, a hand on either side of the doorway, and she stared at Jill, one eye half closed, while her mouth opened and shut like the mouth of a fish lying on a river bank.

'Madame Graham? Is it indeed Madame Graham?—And what do you do here?' she asked in the hoarse voice.

'Why, I've come to see you. I've not seen you for so

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 long,' said Jill, and pity struck deeply into her as she saw the gasping, disintegrated old face. 'Come,' she said gently, putting her hand on Madame de Lamouderie's arm. 'Let me sit with you for a little while. And she guided her back into the drawing-room.room.' [sic]

The old lady suffered herself to be placed in her chair and Jill seated herself beside her, neither of them uttering a word.

The thunder-cloud had now mounted to the zenith. All the window-panes showed its blackness above the tossing tree-tops and again a roll of thunder shook the air.

'Where is Marthe? Hark to the thunder. She is not in her room,' said the old lady, suddenly, and in an amazingly normal voice.

'She's gone down to the meadow to get the kid and its mother,' said Jill.

Madame de Lamouderie again stared at her. 'The kid?' she repeated. 'It is Blaise's kid. They will eat it at his first communion. Why not leave it where it is?—I would rather be drowned than eaten, would not you?'

'Well, I don't know,' said Jill, striving to speak naturally. 'Drowning must be very unpleasant, and one wouldn't know that one was being eaten.'

'No. But one would know when the knife was at one's throat,' said Madame de Lamouderie.

Jill was aware of a gathering sense of fear. The room was dark. Only a spot of red glowed on the hearth. Madame de Lamouderie's great gaze rested on her for a

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 moment and then turned slowly round the room. 'My portrait will never be finished now,' she said.

'Why do you say that?' Jill faltered. Her eyes followed Madame de Lamouderie's to the corner where Dick's canvas and easel stood. 'Dick hopes to go on with it, I think.'

'I do not think so,' said Madame de Lamouderie. 'He is finished with it—and with me. Show it to me.'

Jill got up and went to the canvas and turned it outward. And as she saw it she suppressed an exclamation of horror.

'Bring it nearer,' said Madame de Lamouderie.

'No, no,' said Jill, putting it back against the wall. 'It's still so rough. He doesn't mean you to see it yet.'

'I have already seen it. I have repeatedly seen it,' said Madame de Lamouderie. 'Bring it nearer—unless you wish to force me to get it for myself.'

Jill brought it to her then and held it for her to see and the old lady gazed at it in silence for a long time.

'He has made a devil of me, has he not?' she then said.

'It's not finished,' said Jill in a trembling voice. 'It isn't at all like you yet.'

'No? Isit not? I thank you. Yet it is so he sees me. It is so he sees me now, though only a little while ago—only three nights ago—he was with me here, and kind tome. Did you know that he came up here to see me? After he had stayed away until my very blood was grown thick with grief.'

'Yes, I knew.'

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 'He called me his Undine. He kissed me good-night,' said Madame de Lamouderie, her eyes on Jill. 'He kissed me here.' She touched her forehead. 'I told him of my childhood. We talked of life and death. Never have I been so near a human soul as I was near his on that night. He had forgotten her.'

'He had not forgotten her. No. No;—that's where you were mistaken,' said Jill in her shaken voice, still holding the portrait. 'He did not need to forget her to care for you. Oh, try to see that!'

But as she spoke Madame de Lamouderie's face grew livid with rage. 'When he remembers her, he thinks of no one! When he remembers her, he sees me as a devil!—Give it to me!—Give me that portrait he has made of me! Had he come to me and spat in my face he could not have told me more plainly what he felt for me! Give it tome!—There! And there!—So I answer him!' And seizing the heavy paper-knife that lay beside her, she dashed it through the canvas again and again.

Jill could not withstand her. She, too, felt that Graham had insulted Madame de Lamouderie.

'And now!' Panting, with haggard, burning eyes, the old woman flung the canvas aside. 'Now—where shall we look for him? Shall I tell you—you complaisant wife? He ison the island! Your husband is on the island with his saint! He is in the hut with his Saint Cecilia and it is she who now receives his kisses!'

'What do you mean? You must not say such things!' said Jill, blanched with disdain and anger.

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 'I mean what I say. Marthe Ludérac has taken him from us both. Three days ago he was my friend. Three days ago he was kind to me. To-day you have seen what he feels for me. What has happened in those three days? I will tell you. They have become lovers.' Madame de Lamouderie did not quail. Jill's anger steadied her. She eyed her with a narrow, steely look.

'No,' said Jill, after a moment. She, too, spoke quietly. 'I will tell you what has happened. He has found out that you lied to him. You lied to him to take him from her and for a little while he believed you. But then he saw her again and knew that what you said could not be true.'

The old lady, leaning back in her chair, listened, intently, and with a surprising calm. And as she sat, not speaking, looking over steadily at Jill, the intentness of her thought seemed to reconstruct her very features. Her lips composed themselves. Her eyes grew cold with calculation. Careful breaths dilated her nostrils. Something even of her old state-liness and power returned to her.

'So, she has talked with you, too. She guessed what was amiss and sought you out;—once more. My compliments to Mademoiselle Ludérac for her perspicacity! I dare not ask you to take my word for hers. Of that I am too well aware. You, too, no doubt, see me as your husband sees me. But I did not lie. You may ask the curé here if I lied. Marthe Ludérac had soldiers in her room at Bordeaux. He came to me asa

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 friend to warn me; to advise me to keep an eye on an unfortunate who had inherited criminal tendencies. He was informed of all the facts by the excellent women who keep the house where she lodged. She did not even trouble to contradict their accusation when they confronted her with it next morning.'

'The curé and his friends were mistaken,' said Jill. 'The soldier she took in had nowhere else to go. He was not her lover. And even if you believed that story—and I am sure that you did not—you lied to Dick. For you told him that she took lovers; that she was a woman who took lovers—for pay.'

Like the storm, the old lady's fury was rising again; but she controlled it. 'I repeated to your husband what I was told. I do not compute so carefully. I wished to save the unfortunate creature from his pursuit. I wished to save you. I did not act until all the signs showed me that the case was desperate. You do not know what passed between them, here in this room, while she read to me! I saw him steal his glances at her breast, her hands, her lips;—I saw her look back, under her eyelashes. They met on the island—no, you did not know—during your illness. I saw them walking there. Silent. Without one word. And his eyes passed over her like a flame, while she turned her head away. Poor ignorant child!—who think you know life and come to me with your reproofs! I saw from the first that you were blind and helpless in their experienced hands. Your husband is a libertine;—and if he has been faithful to you till now, you have

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 to thank only your freshness and youth. It was simple of you to imagine that he would remain untempted by a woman as seductive as Marthe Ludérac. For she knows what she is doing! She knows that to the libertine there is no seduction so great as that of purity!'

Jill sat silent. A crimson flush had dyed her face as the old woman told her tale; but, in the silence that followed, it sank slowly away, leaving her pallid under her sunburn. She felt a sickness in her veins. The very air seemed tainted, though even now her faith repelled the poison that trailed over the images of those she loved. She was hardly thinking of Madame de Lamouderie as she rose slowly to her feet. 'If it's true—they must be free,' she murmured.

'What is it you say?' asked the old woman.

'If they love each other, so much, they must be free. I must set them free if they belong to each other,' said Jill, looking out at the black sky.

'' ' Grand Dieu! ' '' cried Madame de Lamouderie, 'you will break your heart—you will wreck your life—for that little peasant! No! No! Be braver, my poor child! Just Heaven!—if I were in your place I would show you how a woman fights for her man and deals with her rivals! Wait. Be calm. Say nothing. I have made mistakes for you,—thinking that I could part them. I did not guess how much you already knew—how much you accepted. So, then. Accept it all. Let him have his fill of her. Smile and say no word and let your smile say to him: "So be it, mon cher. Take your little peasant. I do not feel her a rival!" There is no-

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 thing that so much disconcerts a man. He will soon tire of her then. And you will carry him off and punish him—as a woman knows how to punish; and some day, when he is sufficiently unhappy—forgive him. Do you see?—That is what you must do,' and the old lady's eye closed in a clinging leer as she offered her counsel.

'I'm sorry,' Jill muttered. 'You don't understand. I'm not like that.' She stood with her hand on the back of her chair, trying still to think. 'I must set them free, so that nothing shall be spoiled for them. They belong to each other;—but they are not lovers, yet.'

'They are lovers!' cried Madame de Lamouderie, passionately, though the leer still lingered like a smudge of mud across her face. 'I did not think it, either, until to-day. To-day I know. He was here this morning. To paint my portrait!—You have just seen how he painted my portrait this morning!—I am to be their pander, their go-between. That is his little plan. She sent for him to come to her in the garden and I watched them while they walked. I am not to be deceived by quiet. And all was not so quiet. Even though they saw me there, they could not control their fires. Everything—everything had passed between those two. I know the signs.'

Jill heard the thunder rolling and crackling overhead. She stood and listened to it. 'I must go now,' she said, when the reverberations had died away.

'You must go? So be it. I have indeed nothing to

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 offer you: and this is a house of ill-omen. You do well not to stop in it.'

'Good-bye, then,' said Jill. 'I'm sorry—I wish—'

She paused. She did not know what she wished; nothing that she could say to Madame de Lamouderie.—That she and Dick had gone away when they came to the Manoir a bare month ago, perhaps. He had been afraid. He had wanted to go. Poor Dick. She looked about the dusky room where Dick had first seen his fear, and when her eyes came back to Madame de Lamouderie's they found hers fixed upon her. The pity with which she had first seen her this afternoon smote upon her once again.

'How dark it is in here,' she said. 'Can I do anything for you? Light anything before I go?'

'No,' said Madame de Lamouderie. 'You can do nothing. I prefer to sit in darkness. Only—give me your hand.'

Jill, mastering the repulsion that mingled horribly with her pity, stretched out her hand to her, and the old lady, putting both of hers upon it, held it closely, looking up at her with a devouring gaze. 'It is you I have loved,' she said in a hoarse whisper. 'You only. Not your husband. That was an old woman's caprice. A trick, such as our wretched senses may still play on us at eighty. You are worth ten of him. It is you I love. Do you understand?'

Jill, sickening, tried to draw away her hand, but, holding it fiercely now, Madame de Lamouderie staggered to her feet. 'It was all for you. All! All!

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 Do you understand? I risked his hatred for your sake! I knew that it was to risk his hatred! Better that than to share him with that hypocrite!—that parasite!—that low-born peasant girl!—No! No! Stay! Listen to me yet! It was for your sake! I could not bear to see you sacrificed to such a one!'

'Perhaps you believe that,' Jill muttered, pulling away her hand. 'Try not to think about it now. You've been through too much. You are not yourself. Try to rest, and forget all this for a time, if you can.'

'Forget it!' screamed the old woman suddenly, while her face suffered a horrible distortion. 'Forget what he has made me suffer! Only in my grave shall I forget it! Would God that I were there!' And as she uttered the cry she raised her arms above her head and clasped them over her eyes, and Jill, horrified, spellbound, heard that she sobbed savagely.

'Oh—don't. Don't. I beg of you. Try to be quiet.' Jill put out her hand to her, but drew it back. Madame de Lamouderie filled her with fear. She was horrible to see and hear. She stood there, her arms crossed before her face, her hands clutching at her white head behind.

'He kissed me! He loved me! All was well with us at last! He had forgotten her at last!' she cried. '' ' Qu ' elle soit maudite! Qu ' elle soit maudite! ' ''

Casting a glance of terror upon her, Jill fled from the room.

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HE storm had burst over the whole country-side. The forest groaned and bowed under the tempest. The thunder rolled and the lightning flashed in a spectral sky. Jill walked in the midst of it, her head erect, her eyes fixed before her on the seething road, and as she found herself thus exposed to the desperate elements she was quieted and strengthened. She seemed to be driving her ambulance again along a road in the firing-line, hearing the crash of artillery and seeing the flame of bursting shells, and as she had used to say to herself then, while the bullets spattered about her on the road, so she now heard herself saying, 'Steady, old girl; steady.'

Everything was over for her. Everything had come to an end. That was like death. And death came to everyone, sooner or later. Facing death had been one of the easiest things to learn in the war. Everybody learned it. It was easier than putting on wet boots in the morning or drinking tea made with condensed milk. One might flinch and sicken inwardly; but one held up one's head and managed to smile. That was what she must do now.

How the rain boiled up about her feet from the disintegrated road! The stones were loosened by the cataracts of water that poured down its cracks and

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 gullies and the rosy-white of the lightning dazzled her eyes as it glared incessantly from the sky. It had always been a rather glorious thing to be out in a great storm; a purifying thing. These torrents, this tempest, laved away the taint and sickness of the reptile-house from which she had come. Wretched old woman. Horrible. Piteous.—No;—don't think of her.

This might seem worse than dying, but that was because it was so full of pictures. Death always seemed just emptiness, and that was because you had to leave everything when you died. Whereas, in this, everything was leaving you. In death you lay down and forgot; in this, you stood up and remembered. It was because of the memories that Madame de Lamouderie had flung her arms up in that horrible way and clutched at her head behind. She did not know how to stand still. But if one were not careful, one might be like that oneself. One might break down and rave and scream. No; no. No pictures. No pictures of Dick's head on her breast at night—taking refuge. No pictures of Marthe Ludérac walking with him in the garden; so still.

The cemetery wall was before her now and the chestnut branches dashed themselves against it above Madame Ludérac's grave. The bristling tin tubs glittered against the black as the lightning struck across them. Jill glanced, and turned her eyes away. Round the corner the woodland road ran down into the grande route. It would be better when she was out

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 upon the grande route, all the river, all the sky before her. Suddenly, below her, coming round the wall, she saw Marthe Ludérac.

If Marthe had been exhausted that morning, what was she now? She was bowed against the blast; half obliterated by the rain. A kid tottered, bleating, after her, and as she came into view she stopped and turned to it with a gesture of dogged tenderness, picked it up, toiled on with it for a little way, then set it down again. Its weight was beyond her strength.

Jill, motionless, watched her staggering up the stony road, and as she approached, a stillness, a whiteness, like that of the antechamber of death, fell upon her.

They were near each other, they were only a few yards apart, when Marthe lifted her face and saw Jill standing in the road above her. She stopped still, and, through the tempest, they looked at each other. Then Jill opened her arms and she came into them. She laid her arms on Jill's shoulders and bent her head upon her breast. The rain was like a heavy shroud enfolding them.

'Marthe, Marthe,' Jill whispered. 'Nothing is changed between us.'

Nothing was changed. She knew that now. Marthe's face, holy and beautiful, had banished for ever the dreadful darkness. It was as if they had passed through death together and reached a place where no word need be said; no question asked. And as they stood thus embraced, an experience transcend-

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 ing any she had ever known came to Jill. Her love for Marthe Ludérac flamed up and enfolded them both, and enfolded Dick, and all her being was filled with rapture. She was filled with life from head to foot; and life was love, only love; and this bliss came to her because she loved Marthe Ludérac and because Marthe was holy; though it seemed only a shattered, helpless woman she held, beaten beyond all will or feeling.

'Don't cry, darling,' she heard herself say; from far away, and after how long a time she did not know. For Marthe was sobbing on her breast. Under the chestnuts, Jill saw that they might find a little shelter. The form she held was wet through and through; Marthe's hair streamed rivers of rain into her bosom. She drew her beneath the boughs, and they leaned against the cemetery wall. The kid lay down, creeping closely to their feet.

'Jill,' whispered Marthe, 'let me tell you this. I have been faithful to you. I could not deny that I loved him. But not one word, not one look of tenderness has he had from me.'

'Oh, poor Dick!' half sighed, half smiled Jill. Paradise was a childlike place. One could smile in paradise.

But, hearing these words from her friend, Marthe Ludérac lifted her ravaged face and gazed at her.

'You must have made him very miserable, Marthe,' said Jill, gently regarding her. 'I'm afraid I couldn't have kept that up with a man I loved.'

'But, Jill—you do not understand.' Marthe's

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 sunken eyes dwelt on her. 'I have seen him when you did not know. It was not only when you sent him to me on the island. I have seen him at the Manoir;—at night, once; alone. And this morning, after you and I were in the woods—he came. And we were together in the garden; we walked there together, for a long time.'

'Yes, I know. I wanted you to see him. You remember what I said this morning, Marthe; even this morning, when I did not understand as I do now. I knew that you and he must see each other. I knew that everything must come quite clear between you, when you saw each other.'

'Quite clear?' A look of incomprehension drew Marthe's brows to a knot of suffering.

'Marthe, my darling, you and Dick belong to each other. That's what's clear now—to all of us. You and he are never going to part,' said Jill.

All this time Marthe had rested upon Jill's shoulders while they leaned against the wall; now she drew her arms away. 'What do you mean?' she asked.

'What I say, Marthe. I am going to set Dick free,' said Jill.

As she heard the words, Marthe's face took on a look of terror. 'You believe that I am going to take your husband from you?'

'But, Marthe—you have taken him from me,' Jill said, oddly grimacing so that her tears should not flow down. 'Or, rather—for you've done nothing—he's taken himself from me and given himself to you.'

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 'No,' said Marthe after a moment, intently thinking. 'No. It is not so. He will always love you. You will always be his loved wife.'

'Marthe, I understand.' Jill still grimaced. 'No good going into that. He loves me. But it's you he wants.'

'Such wants pass.'

'Not Dick's for you. When he's with you he's in heaven. That's what it comes to. You'll never make him forget his want of heaven.'

'No! It is not heaven! With you it is heaven;—not with me! It is wrong with me!' cried Marthe Ludérac, looking fiercely about her, up at the cemetery wall, out at the forest, as though she sought some escape from the anguish of her thought. 'He is wrong—always wrong—when he is with me! Let him go! Let him forget me! Let it be like a bad dream to you both! It is a bad dream. It is a spell that has fallen upon him, and upon me.'

'No! No! No, Marthe,' said Jill in a trembling voice, but with a depth of conviction against which the other's passion spent itself in vain. 'It only seems like that;—because I am there between you;—and because you are human, and want each other, in every way. If I were not there, if you belonged to him—it would all be beautiful. And it shall be. Do you think I can keep Dick now, after what I've seen? Dick and I have loved each other; we love each other still; but it's nothing, nothing, to what he feels for you. Some people love when they're young and afterwards they

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 are kind to each other. It's a habit; and the kindness keeps them together. But with you and Dick age will make no difference. I see it all. When you are an old, old woman, you would only have to hold out your hand to him, and he would follow you. He is yours for ever and ever. If you were dead and he never saw you again, it would make no difference. As long as he could remember you—he would still be yours.'

Marthe Ludérac closed her eyes. She leaned against the wall and her head drooped. 'I cannot talk,' she muttered. 'What you say is a romance—It is not true. But I cannot talk any longer. I am too tired—'

'No, we won't talk now,' Jill murmured, sustaining and enfolding her. 'Listen, my darling Marthe. You can't go back to the Manoir. You are to come with me, to Buissac. I'll help you. I'll carry the kid. You shall be quietly with me at the Ecu d'Or. You shall not see Dick until you feel you care to. I'll see him. I'll explain everything to him. I will take care of you.'

Helpless within her arms, Marthe's head hung against her breast. She seemed almost fainting; but Jill heard the word she muttered: 'Impossible. Impossible.'

'It's not impossible. It's the only way. You shan't go back to that horrible old woman. She'll kill you. I'm not going to argue with you. I'm not going to torment you. You are only coming with me, your friend, to be taken care of. Do you see? Marthe—my darling—don't set yourself against what must be.'

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 For Marthe was pushing her away, raising her head again, turning from her. 'Never; never; never,' she said, with a dulled yet passionate utterance. She stood pressing her hand against Jill's breast, keeping her at arm's length, and she fixed her sunken eyes upon the upland road as if measuring her strength against its steepness and the distance to her home. 'Never,' she repeated yet again, and with returning force apparent in her voice and mien. 'What you ask of me would kill me. I am better now. I am rested. I can go alone. Later;—to-morrow, perhaps, I will see you. And I will see him. I have promised him that we shall meet once more. Good-bye.'

'But, Marthe.' Jill clung to her arm. 'She's mad. I've just seen her, and she's mad. I'm afraid for you.'

Marthe had passed out into the road, and Jill, carrying the kid, still held her by the arm, nearly weeping.

'That is a folly, dear Jill,' said Marthe. She took the kid into her arms. 'She is very quiet with me, that poor old woman; docile, obedient. And Joseph is there, who understands, and would protect me. I shall not see her again to-day. See, my kid is rested, too; it can go beside me quite well now, for the little way. I took it and its mother to the meadow early this morning and only remembered when the storm came that they were still there. When I found them, the mother had been killed by a fallen tree; the tree beside the cabin had been struck. The kid was lying close beside her; only think how pitiful. I shall buy it from Julie now. I will not part from it. Yes, my little one; one more

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 effort and you shall have hot milk and a warm corner by the fire where you can sleep. And Joseph will do as much for me! Now; do you see, Jill, how calm and reasonable I am? There is nothing to fear for me. And you, too, will be reasonable, will you not? And to-morrow we will see each other. Yes; we will meet once more;—if indeed you feel that is best, when to-morrow comes.'

Jill could not find one word to say. Marthe had escaped from her. She was strong again, with a strange, resourceful strength; with an almost maternal authority and austerity, that counted every moment, calculated every word and glance, while she stooped to pat her kid and turned her eyes on Jill, appraising her submission.

'Good-bye, then,' said Jill. She submitted. She saw herself helpless, as always, before Marthe Ludérac. But she had begun to cry and the tears at last were streaming down her face.

Marthe Ludérac stood there in the storm and looked at her intently for a moment. 'My loved Jill,' she said.

She took Jill's hand in hers and held it against her cheek.

'My loved Jill,' she repeated, gazing into Jill's eyes with a deep, radiant look. 'We shall never forget each other,' she said.

Then, turning away, she walked rapidly up the road towards the Manoir, supernaturally sustained, it seemed to Jill, who watched her until a turning hid her from sight.

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OUR after hour, all the hot hours of early after noon, all the hours of storm, Richard Graham lay sleeping. It was a deep, but not a dreamless sleep, and the dream was sweet. First he was a little boy, sleeping beside his Scotch Nannie. His head was on her shoulder and her arms enfolded his small body. He had been ill, perhaps; or unhappy; for a lassitude, like that after fever or weeping, was on him; and no thought was in his mind; only the deep, calm assurance of rest. Then it was in Jill's arms that he slept; it was always the same dream, and he was always sleeping, yet aware. But the arms that held him were now Jill's and the sense of security, of danger escaped, was deeper than before. And then he lay in the arms of Marthe Ludérac. He knew that the change had come, yet it gave him no surprise. Perhaps from the beginning he had known that this was to be the final bliss, if bliss it could be called when it was so quiet. He lay beside Marthe Ludérac and her arms enfolded him, and his her; and they were one. All fever, all desire, was satisfied; he knew no want. The barriers that life had placed between them had vanished; it was in the grave, or in a field of paradise, that they lay; contented; united; yet uncommunicating. 'This, then, was what I needed,' was the dim thought drifting through his

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 mind. Time was abolished; want was abolished. Everything was still; and everything was full of light. Together they sank into unconsciousness.

When he opened his eyes and saw Jill standing before him, he looked at her quietly for a long moment while the dream slid in upon itself, backward, and Jill, and his Nannie, were as real as Marthe had been. There was no shock or loss. It was all one. Then, in a sudden surprise, he sprang to his feet. Behind Jill was Amélie, with a steaming broc in her hand.

'Good God, Jill—what has happened!' he said, but the dream was about him and he smiled at her.

'The car broke down. I walked back in the rain. That's all.' Jill, too, smiled at him. 'Put the water in the dressing-room, Amélie.'

Graham turned his eyes on the window. 'But it's thunder I hear. It's a great storm. Have you been out in this storm? Have I slept all day?'

'Nearly all day,' said Jill. She walked towards the dressing-room, Amélie following her.

'But—Jill—you're drowned!' he cried.

'Ah—it is a wonder indeed that Madame is not drowned—in this flood!' Amélie set down the broc for a moment to enlighten him. 'Never has there been such a flood in Buissac. Already the poor people are driving their cattle into the town and the corpse of a cow passed along the river a little while ago.' Amélie was tragic and exhilarated.

Jill had fallen on a chair in the dressing-room, and, after looking at her for a moment, Graham knelt down

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 before her and began to take off her sodden shoes. 'Get a glass of hot cognac and water—will you, Amélie,' he said, over his shoulder, and Amélie, crying out that it was precisely what Madame Michon had advised, sped away on the behest.

Graham, deftly, quietly, poured out the water and chafed Jill's icy feet as he put them into the basin. He often bathed Jill's feet for her, and never failed to remark on their beauty. But to-day he said nothing. And she suffered his ministrations in silence.

Amélie brought the cognac and she drank it obediently, and then, when the feet were dried.

'Now,' she said, 'I'm going to sluice down with hot water and go to bed.'

Dick had risen and was looking at her. 'The best thing you can do. A long sleep is what you need. Like mine.' Still he looked at her. 'Such dreams, Jill;—such strange long dreams I've had.'

She saw from his eyes that his dream was still about him and seeing it she felt again the sense of an unearthly radiance that had come to her on the mountain road. She and Dick were suddenly near together; almost as near as she and Marthe had been. They were friends in a deep, final sense that made of the nearness of marriage a clumsy, inadequate device. They were smiling at each other and tender, foolish thoughts came to her mind. 'Not too strange I hope,' she said. 'What would your horrid Freud make of them?'

'He's welcome to make what he likes.—Are you going to sleep in here?' There was the little bed in the

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 dressing-room that Graham had slept in during her illness.

'Yes. In here. So that you shan't disturb me.'

'You'll have some dinner first?'

'Yes. A little dinner, on a tray.—Amélie knows.'

'I see.—And then you'll sleep?'

'Yes. Don't come in to see. I'll be sound very soon.'

'And to-morrow?'

'To-morrow we can talk, Dick,' said Jill.

She smiled at him and she saw, as he stood in the door, gazing at her gravely, that he measured the immense distances that had come between them. They were near as never before in their lives; yet all life now divided them. He would not kiss her good-night. No. She saw that he would not. The radiance was there, about them both, and it still sustained her; but when he had softly closed the door, Jill, for one black moment, gasped on a rising surge of tears; bit them down, fought and mastered them. No; no; no;—she would not think. The next thing to do was to sleep. And she undressed rapidly.

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UT Jill did not sleep as Graham had slept. The rain poured on all night and it seemed to her that she heard it all night long, though she drifted into intervals of unconsciousness. Dick heard it, too, for she saw the crack of light under his door while he walked about and opened or shut his windows. She could do nothing for Dick now. She wondered if Marthe were lying awake, listening to the rain. And the terrible old lady, what were her thoughts? All three thinking of Dick. How strange it was! How absurd! What did it mean? Was it all a fevered, tumultuous dream, this love that so tormented and severed them? Why could they not all love each other, and Dick, and be happy in the radiance of unity? But no; the night wore on and her pulses, beating in heavy, lonely sorrow, told her that while one was enmeshed in personal life such unity could only come to one in moments that transcended and lifted one above it. It was the fire of life that burned in one, and to escape into its light was to cross from one order of being to another. But it was not the fire she felt, now, or the light; only the slow, sick pulse of sorrow.

She fell asleep at dawn and slept until Amélie knocked at her door with her breakfast tray.

'Ah—c ' est un véritable déluge, Madame, '  said Amélie,

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 entering with a beaming face. 'The roads are flooded. The children cannot go to school. ''Viens, Germaine, et dis bonjour à Madame. ' ''

Germaine, though chocolates had passed between her and Jill, did not say good-morning, but her small, square face, topped by its cockade of red ribbon, peered round at the pretty lady from behind her mother's skirt.

Dick looked in while Amélie was there and smiled at her and asked her how she had slept. She felt that he had seized the opportunity so that they should not be alone. His face looked strange and new. He was much older. She suddenly saw what he would be like when he was an old man. She saw what his father, perhaps his grandfather, had looked like. Something bare, elemental, atavistic, was revealed in his face.

'I'm breakfasting downstairs,' he said, 'so that I can watch the river. It's magnificent. When will you get up?'

'As soon as I've had my breakfast.'

'And come down to the ''salon? ' ''

Yes.'

Dick looked at her, humbly, intently. He was afraid of her; afraid for her. Before his strange, aged, humble eyes, Jill's eyes fell. She could do nothing for Dick. She would not be able to hide from him how he must make her suffer. She took up her roll and buttered it, mechanically, and poured out her coffee, while Amélie, watching the devoted pair with fond complacency, still loitered in the door, turning her head to rebuke

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 Germaine who sported shrilly in the corridor: '' ' Tais-toi, Germaine. Tu auras une claque si tu cries comme celà! ' ''

'All right, then,' Dick muttered. 'I'll be waiting.' He closed his door.

'Did Madame see Madame la comtesse last night?' Amélie then inquired.

'Yes. Why?' Jill looked up, startled.

'The old lady seems to have lost her wits,' said Amélie, while a deeper pleasure shone from her face. 'Jean, the baker's boy, drove down from Mérinac last night and saw her in the forest, running down the road, bareheaded; not even a cloak upon her in the storm. Mademoiselle Ludérac and Monsieur Trumier came after her and led her back to the Manoir.'

'Good Heavens!' said Jill, to herself, though she spoke aloud. She was thinking of this end to Marthe's day.

Amélie looked at her consideringly and ventured further.

 ' Elle est toquée, '  she placed a finger on her forehead.' can heard her screaming out the name of Monsieur and that she must go to him;—that she had something to say to him; a confession to make; and that he would forgive her. Jean thinks that Mademoiselle Ludérac promised her that she should see him. Only so would she consent to be led away at last. Ah—it is a sad life for that young person, is it not, Madame?—First the mad mother and then the mad friend.'

'If only she were mad. That would be a comfort,' Jill thought. Aloud she said; 'Mademoiselle Ludérac

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 is a saint, Amélie. But the old lady isn't mad. She's had a misunderstanding with Monsieur and it makes her miserable. He will see her, as Mademoiselle Ludérac promised. And it will be all right. It's dreadfully sad when old people like that are so unhappy.'

'Ah, yes, it is a sad thing, when one is over eighty, to be capable of such attachments,' Amélie observed. 'There is an age for everything, n'est-ce-pas, Madame?'

But to this Jill found it more convenient to make no reply.

She dressed quickly, turning her eyes from her mirror to the desolate scene outside. The livid river had risen to the level of the road and flooded in upon it through openings in the wall. She fixed her mind upon the flood.

In the salon, Dick had lighted the fire and stood at the window looking out, and when he turned and saw her he said nothing.

She fumbled in her pockets for her cigarettes. She had left her case upstairs, and Dick offered her his, struck a match and lighted her cigarette for her, while she sank onto the sofa.

Half closing her eyes, she drew in a breath of smoke. The cigarette affected her as a raft they both clung to. But they must plunge. And she felt the water close over her head as she said, her eyes on the fire, 'Dick—I know everything.'

He had stood looking at her with the lighted match in his fingers, and he shook it out and tossed it into the fire, and sat down on the edge of the table, folding his arms.

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 'I was with Marthe, twice, yesterday,' Jill went on. 'We were both too tired. I couldn't persuade her. We had to leave it. But to-day you must see her and make her understand that you and she must go away together.'

Dick loomed up there between her and the window, tall, dark, still, with his folded arms. 'Leaving you?' was what he said at last.

'I'll be going, too,' said Jill, pausing for a moment to think. 'In another direction. It's all really simple, isn't it?—when people understand each other, and love each other.'

'Simple, do you call it? Bringing our marriage to an end?'

It was not a case for retort. He did not mean it like that. Jill understood. 'We couldn't, of course; if it had been anything small, or usual. I mean—if you'd been unfaithful, in the usual way, with the usual sort of person—I'd have forgiven you, of course. I shouldn't have dreamed of our parting. But it's not a case for forgiveness, now. It has nothing to do with forgiveness. Only for understanding. And I do understand.'

'I don't quite make out how you do,' Dick muttered, taking a tighter grasp of his arms and turning his head to look down at the fire.

'How I understand as I do, you mean?—Because of Marthe, of course,' said Jill. 'After all'—and she could not repress a curious little smile, half sweetness, half bitterness—'I loved her before you did.'

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 'Did you? I wonder,' Dick murmured, his eyes on the fire.

'Well, I knew I loved her before you did,' Jill amended, gently. And this Dick, apparently, accepted.

'There's nothing left for us to go on with, is there?' Jill continued. 'We care for each other, just as much as ever, no doubt. But that's not enough, now. You've never cared for anybody as you do for Marthe. And you can't go on without her. Or she without you, for that matter; though she thinks she can.'

'Dick seemed to ponder, his eyes still on the fire. He brought them to her as he said at last; 'But how can I go on without ''you? ' ''

And at that, after a moment, Jill got up and walked away to the window.

But Dick followed her. He came behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders and turned her round so that he looked down into her eyes. 'How could you go on without me, Jill?' he asked.

'If she allowed her thoughts to rest for one moment on her own shipwreck, Jill knew that her tears must gush forth; and if she wept Dick's arms would go round her. She yearned for his arms; but they would sear her flesh. She held her eyes widely open while she looked up at him, a wide, tragic gaze from the eyes so framed for mirth, and she asked in her turn: 'But how could I go on with you, Dick?'

'You've never meant so much to me,' he said, looking down into those wide eyes. 'I've never loved you so much.'

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 'Yes,' she nodded; she even tried to smile. 'I believe that. But it doesn't really help us. Because you love her more than you thought you could love anybody. That's what I said to her, yesterday, Dick. When you're with her you're in heaven.'

'But it helps us in this way,' said Graham. He would not pause for what she had said to Marthe. 'It makes it possible for us to go on together, in spite of everything. Not one woman in a thousand could stand it; but you are the one woman who could. Anyone else but you would tear herself—and me—to pieces; but you'd understand; as you do. You'd understand everything. And when I came back, you would have pity and help me to go on without her.'

'When you say,' came back, 'do you mean came back from her?' Jill gazed up at him, still held by him. 'Do you mean that you and Marthe would go away together and then that you'd leave her?'

'She won't come away,' said Graham.' I asked her—yesterday morning. Not only did she refuse; but she showed me why it was impossible. She showed me that I couldn't leave you. So what I asked of her then was that we should be lovers. And that's what I ask of you. That you should remain my wife, while she becomes my mistress.'

At that Jill closed her eyes. 'It was what the old woman said.'

'Madame de Lamouderie? What did she say?'

'That you were lovers; already. I knew it wasn't true. But I thought it wasn't true of you, as well as of her.'

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 Women—Wives or Mothers

By a Woman

believe it to be well within the truth to say that most men cherish, hidden away in an inner pocket of consciousness, their own particular ideal of the perfect woman. Sole sovereign she of that unseen kingdom, and crowned and sceptred she remains long after her faithful subject has put aside the other playthings of his youth. The fetish is from time to time regarded rapturously, though sorrowfully, by its possessor, but it is never brought forth for public exhibition. If to worship and adore were the beginning and end of the pastime, no cavilling word need be said, for the power to worship is a great and good gift, and, save in the fabulous region of politics, is nowadays so rare an one, that when discovered in the actual world its steady encouragement becomes a duty. But to this apparently innocent diversion there is another side. Somewhat grave consequences are apt to follow, and it is to this point of view that we wish to call attention.

When the woman uncreate becomes the measuring rod by which her unconscious living rivals are judged, and are mostly found wanting, then we are minded to lift up our voice and put in a plea for fair-play. To the shrined deity are given by the acolothyst, not only all the perfections of person demanded by a severely

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 'She said that, did she? Cursed old witch. Well, her lies are always half truths, I expect. I should have been Marthe's lover now, Jill, if she would have taken me.'

Jill was leaning away from him, with shut eyes, but fiercely, almost savagely, while he put his truths before her, he held her still and made her see it all; all that she had lost; yet all she gained in the strange triumph of such sincerity.

'Which would you rather, Jill; give me up; let me go;—or have us lovers? The truth, the real truth, that she sees as clearly as I do—more clearly—is that you are my wife and she and I lovers. It's because it's the truth that I feel I may make her accept it. I could never make her accept your place.'

'But I haven't got any place.' Jill freed herself at last, and his hands fell from her as he saw that there was no more for him to say. 'I'm your friend. But I'm not your wife. That's the truth you must make her see. She sees the other because she's French. But I'm English. I'm not a wife if my husband loves somebody else more than he loves me. Oh, I'm not unkind, Dick;—you know I'm not. It's only truth. And how could I bear it, for Marthe, that she should be your mistress? That you should love her—and leave her? I couldn't bear it. I must go. To-day. When she hears that I have gone, she will see what it means to me. She'll see that to myself I'm not a wife any longer. A wife must be everything. She must be home;—but she must be heaven, too.'

Graham stood near the window, where she had left

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 him, and she had moved back as she spoke, till she reached the door. Her hand was on the latch now, as if indeed she was leaving him for ever. He eyed her from across the room. 'You can't go to-day,' he said. 'The car's broken down.'

Jill leaned back against the door and a look of bewilderment crossed her face.

'The car's broken,' Graham repeated, heavily. 'And everything's flooded.'

'To-morrow, then,' Jill muttered.

'To-morrow? Well; we'll see.' He eyed her strangely. 'You'd have to accept it, Jill, you know.'

'Accept what?'

'If she won't consent to come with me; but if she will consent to love me. You'd have to accept it; if she did.'

There drifted across Jill's mind the memory of a phrase that she had heard that morning; words that Marthe had spoken to her in the wood—was it only that morning when it seemed years ago?—'Love need not be light to know itself measured. What is more grave than to be doomed to part?' Even Dick did not know Marthe as she did. Even Dick did not understand the doom that rested upon Marthe. And this was why she had come to Buissac; this was why she had not turned away from the spellbound house. As if in a dream, she saw it all and felt herself armed with the power of the embracing vision.

'I will never accept it,' she said. 'Never; for Marthe. You must belong to each other—for life. You must make her happy. You must live for her; not only love

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 her. Don't worry about me, Dick. I shall be happy again—and she's never been happy. You'll have everything to make up to her. You can't only be her lover. Do you see?'

He did see, at last. He could never himself have found strength to put Jill out. She put herself out. He could never have found the strength with which to beat down Marthe's resistance. Jill gave her to him, Never had he and Jill been so near as in this moment when he saw at last, clearly, that they must part.

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T was late afternoon and at the Manoir door Graham had rung three times. The dark house, cloaked with rain, loomed above him, its walls filled with the furtive patterings of falling drops, like the running feet of mice. Behind him the wet branches of the sycamores sighed in the melancholy wind. There was no other sound; but, as he stood there, his foreboding Scotch blood alert and listening, old Médor stumbled round the corner of the house and paused, as Marthe Ludérac had paused, so long ago, and, fixing his fading eyes upon him, he lifted his nose and uttered a low howl. Hastily, angrily, at that, Graham turned the handle of the door and found it yield. The chill, high hall was before him and from the high window, above the stair, a pallid light fell down upon it.

Graham stood and looked; and listened to the stillness. He was alone as he had never been alone. Jill had not yet left him; but she had found a car and it was to take her that night to Mérinac, where she would catch the Paris train. It might be that he and Jill would never meet again. He had come to tell Marthe Ludérac that she was his wife no longer.

And as he stood in the silent house the real Marthe Ludérac seemed further from him than the Marthe of his dream.

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 He remembered that window. How curiously it had affected him when he first saw it. Should he now, suddenly, see Marthe appear at the turning of the stair? Or would it be the demented figure of Madame de Lamouderie? Or a figure in black, with a patch over its eye? Yes. This house had always terrified him. He knew that now. Had there not been terror, from the first, in his love for Marthe Ludérac? Had he not felt her, from the first, a ghost?—a corpse? What was he doing, standing here in this house of death? What had he come to seek? Where was Jill?—and life?—safe, sweet life?

He mastered the sickness of his blood. He went forward and opened the drawing-room door. The room was empty. The shrouded harp stood in the recess. His easel leaned in its place and he noted the gashed canvas, though he did not move forward to examine its destruction. But by the fire the footstool had been pushed away from the bergère and on the little table was the white earthenware basin that had been so inopportunely visible when he and Jill had first found the old lady; on a day of ill-omen. Madame de Lamouderie had been there, then; and recently.

He went outside and stood. 'Joseph!' he called. Dismally the walls and corridors of the old house answered his call, echoing back its challenge impotently. And as he heard the echo and the silence, another fear smote upon him; a natural, not a supernatural fear. Where was Marthe, then?

He went up the stair. He found the green baize

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 door; and it led him to the old woman's room. It was empty; well ordered for the day. There stood the pink dressing-table and there the bed, all canopied in pink. In a corner was an important prie-dieu, mahogany and worn green velvet, a crucifix above it; and on the opposite wall hung a large engraving of a picture popular in the eighties, '' ' Enfin Seuls! ' '' showing a draped and padded drawing-room in which two fashionable lovers clasped each other. Hideous rubbish it was; just such a picture as Madame de Lamouderie would have hanging opposite the crucifix; yet the element of sincerity in the lovers' absorption transcended the frippery, and Graham felt his heart stabbed to a living love once more by the sight of that embrace. He turned away. He followed the long passage. The door yielded to his hand, as it had yielded on the moonlit night. He stood on the threshold of Marthe's room, as he had stood once before, and it was as empty as if she were dead.

Poor, sad, desolate little room, without a trace of magic now, the window opening on the rainy sky. Yet it had signs of the happier past of childhood. On the bed was a faded satin eiderdown; on the chest of drawers a little toilet-set of silver, such as a child might receive on a splendid birthday, carefully laid out; and was that not, in the corner, sitting in its little chair, a faded, smiling, ancient doll? Yes; through all these years of tragedy she had kept her doll to comfort her. Graham's heart almost broke as he looked at it.

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 'You can't only be her lover.' Those words of Jill's came back to him. He had only been her lover as yet. As he looked at the piteous room, at the smiling doll, a new element came into his love, and into his life. He was unworthy; unworthy; how deeply unworthy—of Jill, and of Marthe. What should he ever do to repay?—to atone? How lift himself to the level where he could be to Marthe what Jill's love and sacrifice demanded of him? Tears came into his fierce dark eyes. He could have fallen on his knees beside the bed and prayed to be purified and strengthened.

A mewing sound drifted down the corridor, and turning he saw the old white-and-grey cat of Jill's first encounter with Marthe Ludérac. He remembered its story as he saw it, and remembered that he had seen it once before. It walked with a jerky gait, its mutilated leg turning in at every step. It was not affected by the loneliness as Médor had been. It looked quietly up at him, accepting his presence, and tilted itself against his leg as it passed into the room and went to sniff at the black sateen apron lying thrown down upon a chair. Contemplating the emptiness, it stood waving its tail tranquilly from side to side for some moments and then, looking up at Graham again, it mewed once more, as if in interrogation. Graham picked it up tenderly.

He went down the corridor, holding the cat, and back to the stairs. The front door opened as he descended them and on the landing he looked down at the upturned face of Joseph;—Joseph wearing a

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 strange little bowler hat of an obsolete shape. The relief of seeing him was exquisite.

Joseph was agitated, too much agitated to express any surprise or displeasure. 'Is Monsieur looking for Madame la comtesse?' he asked.

'Yes. And for Mademoiselle Ludérac,' said Graham.

'Mademoiselle has gone out to seek her kid. It has escaped, or been taken away. She went to give it its evening milk in the shed;—and found it gone. But the rope, too, was gone, so that we think the boy from the cottage may have come to fetch it.'

Relief, delicious, ecstatic, was flooding Graham's heart. He stood above Joseph, the cat in his arms, and questioned him. 'Why should the boy come for it—if it's Mademoiselle's?'

'Ah; Mademoiselle Marthe intends to buy it now. She will give him two fowls, for his first communion feast, in place of it, as well as its price, to his mother; but Blaise will have set his heart on roast kid.'

'Will he!—The little ogre!'

'Ah, roast kid is an excellent dish, Monsieur,' said Joseph, in his flat, impartial tones. 'And if the kid is not eaten, the fowls will be.'

'That's true enough!' laughed Graham, his sardonic humour gratified by Joseph's realism. 'But since Mademoiselle wants it to live, that's all that need concern us, isn't it?—I must go and help her find it; at once.'

'Ah, but it is Madame la comtesse who is lost now!' said Joseph, and with something of impatience for a gaiety he must feel misplaced, and, indeed, Graham

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 himself felt it misplaced, as he looked into Joseph's face. 'It is Madame la comtesse who will trouble Mademoiselle more than the kid. She is gone. She is disappeared. I went to look at the fire, when Mademoiselle had left me, and she was not there. Only an hour before I had taken her in her panade; but she had not eaten it; the bowl was untouched. Madame la comtesse is not well. Her mind seems to be affected. Mademoiselle is much alarmed for her. And what I now think is that she may have run down to Buissac to find Monsieur. She hoped, I think, to see him last night.'

'I see.' Graham reflected. 'Yes. That's probable. Though I've just come from Buissac and didn't meet her on the road.'

Joseph reflected, observing with a thoughtful eye Graham's hand as it unconsciously caressed the head of the cat. 'She will have gone through the forest then. Will Monsieur not search for her?—and bring her back?'

'But what of Mademoiselle? It's her I've come to see.'

'She will not have gone far,' said Joseph coldly, though Graham felt that Joseph was less cold than might have been expected. 'She will first have gone down to the cottage, to see if the kid is there. If it is not, she may stay there for a little while with Madame Scannin, who is ill. She often visits her. If the kid has run away, it is useless to look for it in this storm.'

'It's most unlikely to have run away, isn't it?'

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 'Most unlikely. That is what Mademoiselle thinks. She thinks that it is Blaise.'

'Well; I'll go down to Buissac, then.' Graham placed the cat in Joseph's arms as he spoke. 'But I'll go to the cottage first, and tell Mademoiselle that I will bring the old lady back, if I can find her. How's that?—Joseph,' said Graham suddenly, looking down into the old man's shrinking eyes; 'you may trust me.'

'Trust you, Monsieur?' Joseph eyed him askew.

'Yes. You may trust me and Madame Graham. We want the same thing for Mademoiselle.'

'You cannot take her from Buissac. You cannot take her from France,' said Joseph in a low, concentrated voice. 'She remains with me. I have cared for her since she was a child. I have known her family from before her birth. It would kill her to take her away.'

'No; no; no;—it wouldn't kill her,' said Graham, also speaking in a low voice and as if to an equal. 'And you shall not be left. Trust me. That is all. If you could understand what I feel for her, even you would be satisfied.'

'You cannot understand her,' said Joseph. 'You are a stranger.'

Graham stood there in the hall, and for a moment, as he looked at Joseph, another fear flickered in his heart. Was Joseph right? What was the life he could give Marthe Ludérac? Would he take her from the darkness that she knew into another, a strange darkness?

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 Was she not rooted here as deeply as the chestnut-trees that grew above her mother's grave? Then he remembered Jill. Jill believed that he could make up to Marthe—for everything. Jill, who loved Marthe, had left her to him.

'You must trust me, Joseph,' he said. 'I am not a stranger. I do understand her. If they trust me—so must you.'

Joseph, making no reply, stood in the doorway and watched him pass out, under the silent bell.

He did not knock when he reached the cottage. He pushed open the door and found himself in the one room of the place, with floor of hard-beaten earth, wide fireplace, where a pot hung from a chain above a faltering fire, and stately bed in a corner. From the pillow the white face of a peasant woman turned to survey him in astonishment. A small boy sat before the fire.

'Have you seen Mademoiselle Ludérac?' Graham asked.

The little boy, staring with all his eyes, remained speechless, but the woman said: 'Mademoiselle was here a little while ago. We have no news of the kid. The mother has been killed by the lightning. Heaven pray that no evil has befallen the kid. Mademoiselle has promised to buy it from us.'

'Where has she gone, then? Where is she?' cried Graham. 'She's not looking for it on such a day!'

'But Mademoiselle would be well capable of looking for it—with her love of dumb things. I cannot tell

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 you where she is gone, Monsieur. Back to the Manoir, I think. She will bring me some soup before it is dark.'

'But she's not at the Manoir. Where would she have gone? Where would she look for it? Can it have run down to the meadow?' cried Graham.

'To the island? How could it think of such a thing?—when Mademoiselle has always carried it? And in this storm!'

'And it could not get to the meadow. The bridge is under water,' the small boy volunteered suddenly.

'Under water? How do you know that?' his mother questioned.

'I went down to look this afternoon. The stream was almost level with it then. And I went to the bottom of the road and saw the dyke. All the people from Buissac were there. The water was running over the top and through the stones.'

'Running over the dyke?—And why did you not tell me?'

'Mademoiselle Marthe and Monsieur Trumier were there too, and they told me to say nothing, lest it should trouble you. But you would rather know that the kid could not be on the meadow,' said the boy with conviction.

'Pray Heaven the dyke does not give way!' the woman exclaimed. 'It is the best grazing land in the commune and we all remember the flood of fifteen years ago. Not only were six fine cows drowned, but the land was spoiled for two whole seasons. Some people

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 say it has never been so good since; the river did it so much damage.'

Graham took out some coins and laid them on the table, muttering his thanks. He closed the door behind him and stood among the vineyards. The wind had dropped a little, but the rain fell still more resolutely and the evening was now as dark as the rain. Where was she? She could not have gone down the cliff to the meadow. Might she not again be at the bottom of the road watching the menaced dyke?

Suddenly he saw below him, black, tottering, half blotted out by the rain, the figure of Madame de Lamouderie. She was climbing the cliff-side, inch by inch, stopping to breathe at every three steps. He saw her against the sky, as he had first seen her; but this was a livid sky, and she was below, not above him. As he stood there, looking down upon her, she lifted the grey disk of her face and saw him, and she stopped short as if a bullet had gone through her heart.

A horrible presage traversed Graham's mind as he saw that arrest. Just so would a criminal stop, seeing suddenly before him the armed and inescapable forces of the law. No fear that he had ever known equalled the fear he felt as he recognized in that instant the embodied evil before him.

He walked slowly down the path until he had come close to her, and as he thus advanced upon her he did not move his eyes from her fixed and staring face. Then, standing still before her,' he said: 'Where is Marthe?'

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 Madame de Lamouderie made no reply. She continued to stare at him, with her mouth twisted to one side.

'Where is she? I've come to find her,' said Graham.

Madame de Lamouderie had evidently been exposed to the elements for a considerable time. The black laces of her hat-brim were beaten down about her neck. Rain streamed from her arms and shoulders; it seemed to pass through her, and her skirts were deep in mud and clung closely to her knees.

She made an effort to speak at last; but only a croaking sound issued from her throat.

'Why are you out here in this storm? What's brought you out?' Graham demanded, mastering his mounting fury.

'I have come to look for her,' said the old lady in a dry, rattling voice.

'Come to look for her! When did you miss her, then? You must have gone before she did.'

The old lady shook her head. 'No; no;—you are mistaken. You do not understand. It was when I did not find her that I came to look. She is nowhere to be found. Nowhere,' said the old lady, gazing all round her and then back at him with gaunt eyes.

Graham stood there, piercing her with his menacing stare.

'I want her,' the old lady went on, and her voice now found the tremolo of pathos and ill-usage. 'I cannot live when she is not beside me. She is the one person in the world who cares for me.'

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 'That may well be so. That's very likely, I think,' said Graham with unstudied cruelty. But he stood and pondered. There was always the half truth in her lie. Marthe was the one person in the world who cared for her and it was very probable that, even while she hated her, Madame de Lamouderie wanted her. Was it just possible that she had missed her and come out to seek her? And as he stood in this uncertainty, the old lady watched, watched him;—in what was almost a frenzy of fear and caution;—as a lion-tamer in a cage might watch the lion upon whom his wiles have failed to act. And as he remained silent, gazing down at the rainswept hillside, she found a further note: 'I am very weary,' she murmured. 'I am dead with weariness.' A distorted smile twisted her mouth still further. 'Will you not lend me your arm,' she murmured, 'to reach the house again? Then we can take counsel of Joseph.'

'No; I'll do nothing for you; nothing, do you hear?' Graham muttered. 'Until I find her. Stay here, or crawl back home by yourself—as you please;—you'll get no help from me. There's something about you;—there's a lie;—a horror—' He stopped.

From far below them, through the rushing of the rain, a sound came to his ear. Faint; thin; intermittent. The bleating of a young animal in distress. 'Good God!' he cried. 'She's down on the island!'

The old lady sprang at him and seized his arm. 'No! No!' she cried. 'You are mad!—On the island?—You are mad! It is already under water! I have been down to look. The dyke is down!—The kid is

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 drowned!—Listen! Listen!—to one who loves you! It was for your sake—for the sake of your wife that I lied to you!—Yes! Yes! I have lied! So that you should not go to her!—so that you should not break your young wife's heart!—Oh, listen!—Stay one moment!—She is at the Manoir!—She is hidden in the Manoir!—So that you should not find her!—She begged me to keep her secret! She is in deadly fear of you!'

Turned away from her, his hand laid on her shoulder to force her from him, he had paused to hear what she might still bring forth; but now, again, came the sharp, the faltering bleat; unmistakable. The kid was on the island and Marthe was with it.

As he sprang down the path he dragged Madame de Lamouderie with him. She was clinging to his arm, clawing at his coat; her feet slipped and beat on the uneven path as she grappled with him. But one backward blow of his arm freed him at last. He heard her fall roughly on the stones, and as he bounded forward her wailing cry followed him—half curse, half lamentation: 'Insensate! Mad! Cruel! You will drown! You will die! The dyke is down! You will not find her!'

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HE bridge was already under water, though the still emerged; his feet found the plank and he crossed on it. Films and fans of water were sliding over the meadow and he heard the deep rush of the streams on either side; but as he turned and ran, on higher ground, round the promontory, he was hardly ankle-deep in water. The dyke was not yet down. The cabin was not far: not more than a quarter of a mile. If the plank was too deep by the time they got back to the bridge, they could pull themselves across by the. Even if they had to throw themselves into the stream, the current might carry them against the cliff. They could climb up and be saved. On one hand as he ran he saw the shadowy ranks of the poplars, swaying against the wind; on the other, looming above him, was the cliff. The memory of all his old terrors was in his mind, but a fiercer fear raced beside him. Should he outstrip the fall of the dyke? Even as he ran he could feel that the confluent streams met in mounting waves over his feet.

Suddenly his ankle turned under him in a sickening twist and wrench. He fell heavily on his hands and knees over a hidden obstacle, and as he raised himself he ground his teeth with fury, for the foot was sprained, or broken. Forcing it to bear his weight, he splashed

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 forward, catching at his breath, the anguish bringing a cold sweat to his brow, and he saw at last before him the cabin, set small and low between the heights; visionary no longer; its sinister secret all displayed; the place appointed for their death, unless they could outstrip the flood. And, loud and piteous now, came once more the cry of the kid.

He reached the cabin and dragged himself round to the door, holding by the wall. The door was on the further side, and there, bending to the latch, was Marthe. She was picking, pulling, fiercely yet accurately, at a knot tied with wet rope to a padlock across it. She wore the small black shawl tied under her chin and the black raincoat in which he had first seen her. Graham laid his hands upon her shoulders.

She started back, and then stood still under his hands. In the gaze they exchanged her eyes measured the full meaning of his presence; yet it might have been the kid only she was thinking of as she said: 'It is tied too tight. I have no knife. I cannot open it.'

Without a word, leaning against the cabin wall, Graham took out his knife and sawed at the tough, wet rope.

'Did you hear the kid cry? In all this storm? Is that how you found me?' Marthe went on. And not pausing for a reply: 'She carried it down. She took it from its place in the shed and carried it down. I met her. She told me it was here. She did not even trouble to lie to me. She did not even pretend that it had run away;—she was so sure that I was to die. She tied

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 the rope; so that I should take too long. She risked her life to do it. She is mad.'

'Yes. That was what she did. I met her. She lied to me. To the last she tried to keep me from you. But we've foiled her, this time;—we've foiled her at last,' muttered Graham, bending over the knot. Terror and joy inundated his soul. And again it was as if he blessed Madame de Lamouderie who brought them thus together.

The rope snapped. Inside the hut the kid was cowering. Marthe lifted it, murmuring, 'My poor little one, you shall not be left to die.'

'We shall all die, unless we make haste. Give me the kid. And run. Run to the bridge. I'm following.' He leaned against the cabin and put out his hands for the kid, while he felt the water lap about their feet.

But she was standing still. Her white face scanned him. 'What is the matter? Why do you not come, too?'

'I am coming. Give me the kid.' He forced himself forward on the broken foot.

'You have injured yourself. You are in great pain. You cannot walk,' said Marthe.

'I've hurt my foot, a little. It is nothing. I can get along—more slowly. In God's name, give me the beast and go!' cried Graham in a voice of sudden fury. 'I promise to you to save it—and myself—if I can.'

'You think that I will leave you? You cannot think it. Take my arm,' said Marthe. 'Lean on me.'

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 As she spoke a distant tumult shook the air. Muffled yet portentous, it seemed to drop down upon them from the promontory as the echo of the catastrophe was beaten against the rock. And a strange stillness followed it. As though the very wind and rain had paused to listen.

'The dyke is down,' said Marthe.

'Run! Run! In God's name run! There is time yet!' cried Graham. 'The river will take five minutes to reach you! You can reach the bridge in five minutes!'

She had turned her head to listen; now she looked back at him. 'There is no time. And you cannot think that I would leave you. There is no time. We must climb onto the roof,' said Marthe. 'Wait. Hold the kid.'

She put the kid in his arms and ran inside the cabin and returned pulling through the water a heavy trestle. She pushed it against the wall of the cabin, not pausing to dispute when he made her mount first. She took the kid from him and helped him to struggle up beside her. The cabin stood some six feet high. It was solidly built. 'The river may not rise to this level,' said Graham.

'Yes. It will,' said Marthe. 'I was a child in the last great flood. It was less terrible than this. When the dyke went down, the river rose far above this height. But wait. It may not be so sudden. The dyke may give way by degrees. I do not think that all has fallen yet.'

They saw, as she spoke, that the obscurity before

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 them shaped itself into an advancing, a darker obscurity. It came with a sinister stillness, softly, swiftly, and spread about them. The river finding its ancient bed once more; rippling and gliding deeply to the poplar groves; to the cliff; as distant now and as inaccessible as the island. The timbers of the cabin groaned and trembled as they felt the impact. But they still held, and the river paused a foot below the cabin roof.

'Can you swim?' asked Graham, scanning the waters.

'No.'

'Nor can I. Yet'—still he looked about him—'one might keep afloat. You could put your hand on my shoulder. The current might carry us down against the cliff—'

'To dash us against it?—You with your broken foot? We could not keep afloat. Why waste our last moments in a vain struggle?' said Marthe. She spoke almost with a tender mockery.

He looked back at her. 'Then we are to die together, Marthe,' he said.

She had drawn her shawl down about her shoulders and folded the kid in it against her side. The form of her face seemed to float upon the darkness; he saw only her gaze and that a starry ecstasy breathed from her. 'Yes. Together,' she said. 'Are you not glad, too?'

He made no reply. He put his arms around her and laid his head, at last, upon her breast. So the dream came true. That had been her secret from the first. It was because she did not belong to life, and to the earth,

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 that he had sought her. She was the light that trembled through all living; but she did not belong to life. It belonged to her; as the earth belongs to the sky. It was so clear to him now that she could not have lived and belonged to him; that he possessed her now only because she was to die. 'Eurydice,' he murmured.

She smiled, as if she understood, though he was almost unaware that he called her by the name of his dreams, and, held in his arms, she bent her head so that she could look into his eyes. And she began to speak to him, at last; swiftly, unhesitatingly, with a passionate quiet and impetuosity; like that of the river rushing over the broken barrier; with an intimacy profound and unfaltering that years of life together could hardly have made more complete.

'I may tell you now how much I love you. I have loved you from the beginning; from the first moment that I saw you;—though at first I thought it fear. It was as if I had been waiting for you always; as if my roots in the dark had been seeking you; listening for you. When I saw you my life ran into yours. I could do nothing to help myself; I could be silent; but I could not help myself; it was like a river running into the sea. And Jill was there, beautiful to me as no one in my life had been beautiful. It seemed to me that you were the darkness that pursued me, and she the light:—I hid myself in her so that you should not find me. Yet my thoughts were full of you always. It was of you I was thinking when you came that night; and when I saw you there I did not think of Jill at all;

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 only of you, and of my gladness—my terrible gladness, that you had come. All yesterday I wandered, and it seemed to me that I could not live when you were gone. Oh, say that you are glad, too. Say that you are glad to die with me as I am glad to die with you.'

'All I know is that I am with you,' Graham muttered. Her passion, her beauty dazed him. She was like a flame within his arms. 'I am glad because I have you. That is all I need.'

Silent, with closed eyes, they kissed each other, again and again, passionately; and as they clung together the sound of the dull, portentous uproar smote again upon their ears.

But those longed-for kisses, in all their tragic sweetness, seemed now irrelevant. He was nearer her when he could look at her than when he kissed her. Let him sink once more into those radiant eyes. Let him lose himself. For the cabin again trembled beneath them; the water had risen nearly to the roof; he was seeing, in dark flashes, the swiftly approaching death. How would it be at the end? Could they keep this rapture fast?—hold closely to each other, while they fought the cold, insensate element that would batter at lips and nostrils? How horrible to have to fight death even while one prayed for its deliverance! And, looking into her starry eyes, thinking that this loveliness must die in torment, Graham groaned aloud.

As if she guessed his thoughts she smiled at him and, with a gesture maternal in its tenderness, she drew his

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