ed me: He
will not."

"Gait Roscoe," she replied, "I am not merciful, nor am I just. I
intended to injure you, though you will remember I saved your life that
night by giving you a boat for escape across the bay to the 'Porcupine',
which was then under way. The band on board, you also remember, was
playing the music of La Grande Duchesse. You fired on the natives who
followed. Well, Sam Kilby was with them. Your brother officers did
not know the cause of the trouble. It was not known to any one in Apia
exactly who it was that Kilby and the natives had tracked from Alo's
hut."

He drew his hand across his forehead dazedly.

"Oh, yes I remember!" he said. "I wish I had faced the matter there and
then. It would have been better."

"I doubt that," she replied. "The natives who saw you coming from
Alo's hut did not know you. You wisely came straight to the Consul's
office--my father's house. And I helped you, though Alo, half-caste Alo,
was--my sister!"

Roscoe started back. "Alo--your--sister!" he exclaimed in horror.

"Yes, though I did not know it till afterwards, not till just before
my father died. Alo's father was my father; and her mother had been
honestly married to my father by a missionary; though for my sake it
had never been made known. You remember, also, that you carried on your
relations with Alo secretly, and my father never suspected it was you."

"Your sister!" Roscoe was white and sick.

"Yes. And now you understand my reason for wishing you ill, and for
hating you to the end."

"Yes," he said despairingly, "I see."

She was determined to preserve before him the outer coldness of her
nature to the last.

"Let us reckon together," she said. "I helped to--in fact, I saved your
life at Apia. You helped to save my life at the Devil's Slide. That is
balanced. You did me--the honour to say that you loved me once. Well,
one of my race loved you. That is balanced also. My sister's death
came through you. There is no balance to that. What shall balance Alo's
death? ... I leave you to think that over. It is worth thinking about.
I shall keep your secret, too. Kilby does not know you. I doubt that he
ever saw you, though, as I said, he followed you with the natives that
night in Apia. He was to come to see me to-day. I think I intended to
tell him all, and shift--the duty--of punishment on his shoulders, which
I do not doubt he would fulfil. But he shall not know. Do not ask why. I
have changed my mind