on as belonging to them, and on
view to the world during good behaviour."

He stared at her flushed face, thoughtfully.

"The allegory is all right," he said, "but you've cast the wrong man for
the goat. I'm going."

"Y-you can't go," she stammered, colouring painfully, "unless I give you
a pass."

"I see; it resembles divorce. My sex had to give yours a cause for
escape, or you couldn't escape. And in here you must give me a pass to
freedom, or I remain here and starve. Is that it?"

She crimsoned to her hair, but said nothing.

"Give me that pass," he said.

"If I do every girl here will gossip----"

"I don't care what they say. I'm going."

She sat very still in the hammock, eyes vacant, chin on hand,
considering. It was not turning out as she had planned. She had starved
him too long.

"Mr. Langdon," she said in a low voice, "if it is only because you are
hungry----"

"I'm not; I'm past mere hunger. You disciplined me because I took a human
and natural interest in the pretty inhabitants of this new world. And I
_told_ you that I never would have entered it except for you. But you
made me pay for a perfectly harmless and happy curiosity. Well, I've
starved and paid. Now I want to go. . . . Either I go or there'll be
something doing--because I won't remain here and go hungry much longer."

"S-something--doing?" she faltered.

"Exactly. With the first----"

"You can go if you wish," she said, flushing scarlet and springing out of
the hammock.

He waited, jaws set, while she seated herself at a table and wrote out
the pass.

"Thank you," he said, in such a rage that he could scarcely control his
voice.

She may not have heard him; she sat rigid at the table, looking very hard
into space--sat motionless as he took a curt leave of her, never turning
her head--listened to his tread as he strode off through the ferns, then
laid her brow between snowy hands which matched the face that trembled in
them.

As for him, he swung away along the path by which he had come, unstrung
by turns, by turns violently desiring her unhappiness, and again
anticipating approaching freedom with reckless satisfaction.

Then a strange buoyancy came over him as he arrived in sight of the
gate, where the red-haired girl sat on a camp stool, yawning and knitting
a silk necktie--for eventualities, perhaps; perhaps for herself, Lord
knows. She lifted her grey eyes as he came swinging up--deep, clear, grey
eyes that met his