e body they will disappear
finally."

His words mingled in my dazed mind with the sighs of the troubled
sleeper and the crying of the wind about the tent. Nothing seemed to
paralyse my powers of realisation so much as these twin stains of
mysterious significance upon the face before me.

It was odd, too, how speedily and easily the Camp resigned itself again
to sleep and quietness, as though a stage curtain had suddenly dropped
down upon the action and concealed it; and nothing contributed so
vividly to the feeling that I had been a spectator of some kind of
visionary drama as the dramatic nature of the change in the girl's
attitude.

Yet, as a matter of fact, the change had not been so sudden and
revolutionary as appeared. Underneath, in those remoter regions of
consciousness where the emotions, unknown to their owners, do secretly
mature, and owe thence their abrupt revelation to some abrupt
psychological climax, there can be no doubt that Joan's love for the
Canadian had been growing steadily and irresistibly all the time. It had
now rushed to the surface so that she recognised it; that was all.

And it has always seemed to me that the presence of John Silence, so
potent, so quietly efficacious, produced an effect, if one may say so,
of a psychic forcing-house, and hastened incalculably the bringing
together of these two "wild" lovers. In that sudden awakening had
occurred the very psychological climax required to reveal the passionate
emotion accumulated below. The deeper knowledge had leaped across and
transferred itself to her ordinary consciousness, and in that shock the
collision of the personalities had shaken them to the depths and shown
her the truth beyond all possibility of doubt.

"He's sleeping quietly now," the doctor said, interrupting my
reflections. "If you will watch alone for a bit I'll go to Maloney's
tent and help him to arrange his thoughts." He smiled in anticipation of
that "arrangement." "He'll never quite understand how a wound on the
Double can transfer itself to the physical body, but at least I can
persuade him that the less he talks and 'explains' to-morrow, the sooner
the forces will run their natural course now to peace and quietness."

He went away softly, and with the removal of his presence Sangree,
sleeping heavily, turned over and groaned with the pain of his broken
head.

And it was in the still hour just before the dawn, when all the islands
were hushed, the wind and sea