strode off toward the bridge, his
shoulders flat and his neck stiff.

"You struck him?" demanded Jane, impulsively.

But Cleigh did not answer. His eyes were closed, his head rested against
the back of the chair so Jane did not press the question. It was enough
that she had seen behind a corner of this peculiar veil. And, oddly, she
felt quite as much pity for the father as for the son. A wall of pride,
Alpine high, and neither would force a passage!

They did not see the arch rogue during the day, but he came in to dinner.
He was gay--in a story-telling mood. There was little or no banter, for he
spoke only to Jane, and gave her flashes of some of his amazing activities
in search of art treasures. He had once been chased up and down Japan by
the Mikado's agents for having in his possession some royal-silk tapestry
which it is forbidden to take out of the country. Another time he had gone
into Tibet for a lama's ghost mask studded with raw emeralds and
turquoise, and had suffered untold miseries in getting down into India.
Again he had entered a Rajput haremlik as a woman, and eventually escaped
with the fabulous rug which hung in the salon. Adventure, adventure, and
death always at his elbow! There was nothing of the braggart in the man;
he recounted his tales after the manner of a boy relating some college
escapades, deprecatingly.

Often Jane stole a glance at one or the other of the Cleighs. She was
constantly swung between--but never touched--the desire to laugh and the
desire to weep over this tragedy, which seemed so futile.

"Why don't you write a book about these adventures?" she asked.

"A book? No time," said Cunningham. "Besides, the moment one of these
trips is over it ends; I can recount it only sketchily."

"But even sketchily it would be tremendously interesting. It is as if you
were playing a game with death for the mere sport of it."

"Maybe that hits it, though I've never stopped to analyze. I never think
of death; it is a waste of gray matter. I should be no nearer death in
Tibet than I should be asleep in a cradle. Why bother about the absolute,
the inevitable? Humanity wears itself out building bridges for imaginary
torrents. I am an exception; that is why I shall be young and handsome up
to the moment the grim stalker puts his claw on my shoulder."

He smiled whimsically.

"But you, have you never caught some of the passion for possessing rare
paintings, rugs, manuscripts?"

"You miss