did it. Hiding our faces from the world,
account of him!"

"Do you want to tell me what he did to you?"

Blease glanced at the little shack.

"No, no. I reckon I don't want to tell you. But--Mrs. Blease once was
secretary--never mind. Garman and his swimming pool---- No, I ain't
telling; I ain't telling!"

XXII

The rest of the day was torture for Payne. Blease had said too much
and too little for him to have any peace. He had caught one glimpse of
the woman in the shack, and alternately he wished he had not seen her
and that the sight of her had been more illuminating.

Blease's wife was no "cracker," no native of those parts, no type which
belonged in a squatter's shack in the heart of a jungle. Her presence
there seemed to cry out the news of some foul miscarriage of destiny,
of a wrong to her life too hideous to imagine. Upon her face--still
young--was the tale of a broken soul protesting against the wrong life
had dealt it. He drew his hands across his brow to dispel the memory
of that look and to try to see Mrs. Blease as she had been before it
came. A high type of business secretary. Blease had started to tell
and had stopped. Secretary to Garman possibly. Blease had been
Garman's caretaker. Payne recalled the swimming pool with its
drug-like atmosphere. What had happened there? He felt he would never
know, did not wish to know. What might be happening there now?

A river of ice seemed to roll down his spine and little rivulets seemed
to trickle out to the last nerve tips of his fingers, chilling him
through and through; and he worked through the day dry-throated and
breathing hard, conscious that a crisis in his life lay before him.
Why should it affect him so? What had he to do with Garman's affairs
or the affairs of those with him? The vision of the girl called
Annette, as he first saw her in the dawn on Gumbo Key, stood before his
eyes, and he knew how false his attempts at disinterest. Life had
caught him up in a net with other lives. He thought of Garman, and
groaned behind set teeth.

Night came with no surcease to the apprehension in his heart; and as if
to mock his mood the scene, after a lurid sunset, was beautiful and
kindly beyond compare. A mist of color like powdered silver filled the
air. Soft, near-by stars blinked lazily down upon the scene,
illumining it without the effect of brilliance. A half moon hung idly
in the mists above the cypress trees, and long