d Alice had retired, had thrown Sperry into a
state of positive alarm and kept his heart thumping the while, until
a yawn of his host and a cheerful good-night relieved him of his fear.
The doctor, like others of his ilk, was innately a coward.

On the last night of his visit, Alice and Sperry sat together in a
corner of the veranda. Thayor had gone over to Holcomb's cabin for a
talk; Margaret had retired early.

Alice had been strangely silent since dinner. The doctor's figure in
the wicker armchair drawn close to her own, showed dimly in the dusk.
Tree toads croaked in the blackness beyond the veranda rail; the air
smelled of rain. All growing things seemed to have ceased living;
the air was heavy and laden with a resinous, dreamy vapour--magnetic,
intoxicating. Such a night plays havoc with some women. Under
these stifled conditions she is no longer normal; she becomes weak,
pliable--she no longer reasons; she craves excitement, deceit,
misadventure, confession--quarrels--jealousy--love--stringing their
nerves to a tension and breeding a certain melancholy; it tortures by
its suppression; a flash of lightning or a drenching rain would have
been a relief.

For some moments neither had spoken. The man close to her in the dusk
was biding his time.

"Dear--" he whispered at length.

She did not answer.

He leaned toward her until the glow from his cigar illumined her eyes;
he saw they were full of tears. His hand closed upon her own lying
idle in her lap. She began to tremble as if seized with a nervous
chill. It was the condition he had been waiting for. He watched her
now with a thrill of satisfaction--with that suppressed exultance of a
gambler holding a winning card.

"There--there," he said affectionately, smoothing with comforting
little pats her trembling fingers. Being a born gambler he sat in this
game easily; just as he had sat in many a game before when the stakes
were high--yet he knew that never in his whole discreditable life had
he played for as high stakes as this woman's heart.

Her silence irritated him. He threw his half-smoked cigar into the
blackness beyond the veranda rail and leaned close to her white
throat, framed in the soft filmy lace of her gown.

"Why are you so silent?" he asked. "Is it because--of to-morrow?"

"Sh-sh-sh! Do be careful," she cautioned him; "someone might hear
you."

"We are quite alone, you and I," he returned curtly. "You know he
is with Holcomb and Margaret