ious sunshine makes me feel as
though there weren't any such things in the world."

She leaned back, stretching her arms luxuriously above her head with
the lithe, sensuous grace of movement which her training had made second
nature. Storran's eyes dwelt on her with a queer tensity of expression.
Every gesture, every tone of her curiously attractive voice, held for
him a disturbing allure which he could not analyse and against which he
was fighting blindly.

He had never doubted his love for his wife. Quite honestly he had
believed her the one woman in the world when he married her. Yet now he
was beginning to find every hour a blank that did not bring him sight
or sound of this other woman--this woman with her slender limbs and skin
like a stephanotis petal, and her long Eastern eyes with the subtle lure
which seemed to lie in their depths. Beside her June's young peach-bloom
prettiness faded into something colourless and insignificant.

"It must be nice to be you"--Magda nodded at him. "With no vague,
indefinable sort of things to worry you."

He smiled reluctantly.

"How do you know I haven't?"

"Oh, because I do."

"A woman's reason!"

"Quite. But women's reasons are generally very sound--we were endowed
with a sixth sense, you know! Besides--it's obvious, isn't it? Here you
are--you and June--living a simple, primitive kind of existence, all to
yourselves, like Adam and Eve. And if you do have a worry it's a real
definite one--as when a cow inconveniently goes and dies or your root
crop fails. Nothing intangible and uncertain about that!"

"Have you forgotten that the serpent intruded even upon Adam and Eve?"
he asked quietly.

She laughed.

"Is that a hit at Gillian and me? I know--June told us--that you were
horribly opposed to anyone's coming here for the summer. I thought that
you had got over that by now?"

"So I have"--bluntly.

"Then we're not--not unwelcome visitors any longer?" the soft,
tantalising voice went on. The low cadence of it seemed to tug at his
very heartstrings.

He leaned nearer to her and, catching both her hands in his, twisted her
round so that she faced him.

"Why do you ask?" he demanded, his voice suddenly roughened and uneven.

"Because I wanted to know--of course!"--lightly.

"Then--you're not an unwelcome visitor. You never have been! From the
moment you came the place was different somehow. When you go----"

He stopped as though startled by the sound of his o