ngly green. She wondered why he had chosen emeralds;
they seemed to her to belong to something in which he had no part. At
the back of her mind there hovered a vague, elusive something like an
insect on the wing. Suddenly it flashed into her full consciousness, and
her eyes widened and grew dazed. She saw not the shimmering iridescence
of the stones, but a darting green dragon-fly which for one fleeting
instant poised before her vision and the next was gone. A sharp shudder
assailed her. She closed the case....

When she met Nick again there was no trace of agitation about her. She
seated herself behind the coffee-pot, and told him she had decided to go
to church.

"I congratulate you," said Nick. "So have I."

They were half-way through breakfast when there came the ring of spurred
heels on the verandah.

"Hullo!" said Nick. "Enter amorous swain!"

The colour leaped to Olga's face. She said nothing, and she certainly
did not smile a welcome when Noel's brown face peered merrily in upon
them.

"Happy Christmas to you, good people! May I come and break my fast, with
you? I've been all round the town and this is the last port of call."

"Come in by all means!" said Nick. "Have you brought your harp?"

Noel clapped a free and easy hand upon his shoulder. "No, I haven't. I
can't harp on a full heart alone. I've tied the Tempest to your garden
palings. I hope he won't carry 'em away, for I can't pay any damages,
being broke in every sense of the word! Good-morning, Olga! I'm calling
everyone by their Christian names this morning in honour of the day.
It's my birthday, by the way; hence my romantic appellation."

He dropped into a bamboo-chair and stretched out his arms with a smile
of great benignity.

"I've even been to see Badgers," he said. "He was in his bath and
didn't want to admit me. However, I gained my end, I generally do," said
Noel complacently, with one eye cocked at Olga's rigidly unresponsive
face.

"Who is Badgers?" asked Nick.

"Why, the C.O. of course. I didn't find him in at all a Christmas
spirit; but it was beginning to sprout before I left. I say, I hope you
are providing lots of beef for our consumption, Nick. It's the first
Christmas I've spent out of England, and I don't want to be homesick.
Any form of indigestion rather than that!" He turned suddenly upon Olga.
"Why does the lady of the ceremonies preserve so uncompromising an
attitude? I feel chilled to the marrow."

She controlle