ve got to get through it somehow."

As she spoke, one of the French windows under the verandah opened, and a
man in a panama hat, Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, came out and
raised his hat as he stepped off the verandah.

With a sigh and a frown she closed the book sharply, got up and tossed
it into the chair. No daintier or more desirable incarnation of the
eternal feminine could have been imagined than she presented as she
walked slowly across the lawn to meet the man whom the Law of Selection
had designated as her natural mate, and whom her father, for reasons
presently to be made plain, had forbidden her to marry on pain of exile
from his affections for ever.

The face he turned towards her as she approached was not exactly
handsome as an artist or some women would have defined the word, but it
was strong, honest, and open--just the sort of face, in short, to match
the broad shoulders, the long, cleanly-shaped, athletic limbs, and the
five feet eleven of young, healthy manhood with which Nature had
associated it.

A glance at his face and another one at him generally would, in spite of
the costume, have convinced any one who knows the genus that Mark
Merrill was a naval officer. He had that quiet air of restrained
strength, of the instinctive habit of command which somehow or other
does not distinguish any other fighting man in the world in quite the
same degree. His name and title were Lieutenant-Commander Mark Gwynne
Merrill, of His Majesty's Destroyer _Blazer_, one of the coolest-headed
and yet most judiciously reckless officers in the Service.

There was a light in his wide-set, blue-grey eyes, and a smile on his
strong, well-cut lips which were absolutely boyish in their anticipation
of sheer delight as she approached; and then, after one glance at her
face, his own changed with a suddenness, which, to a disinterested
observer, would have been almost comic.

"I'm awfully sorry, Mark," she began, in a tone which literally sent a
shiver--a real physical shiver--through him, for he was very, very much
in love with her.

"What on earth is the matter, Niti?" he said, looking at the fair face
and downcast eyes which, for the first time since he had asked the
eternal question and she had answered it according to his heart's
desire, had refused to meet his. "Let's have it out at once. It's a lot
better to be shot through the heart than starved to death, you know. I
suppose it's something pretty bad, or you