im. His lips were against her forehead.

"It makes all the difference, dear, does it?"

"Yes," she whispered back, clinging faster. "Just all the difference in
the world, because--because it was that afternoon--I began--to want--you
too."

And there in the darkness, with the dim forest all about them, she
turned her lips to meet her husband's first kiss.

* * * * *

A Question of Trust

I

Pierre Dumaresq stood gazing out to the hard blue line of the horizon
with a frown between his brows. The glare upon the water was intense,
but he stared into it with fixed, unflinching eyes, unconscious of
discomfort.

He held a supple riding-switch in his hands, at which his fingers
strained and twisted continually, as though somewhere in the inner man
there burned a fierce impatience. But his dark face was as immovable as
though it had been carved in bronze. A tropical sun had made him even
darker than Nature had intended him to be, a fact to which those fixed
eyes testified, for they shone like steel in the sunlight, in curious
contrast to his swarthy skin. His hair was black, cropped close about a
bullet head, which was set on his broad shoulders with an arrogance that
gave him a peculiarly aggressive air. The narrow black moustache he wore
emphasised rather than concealed the thin straight line of mouth.
Plainly a fighting man this, and one, moreover, accustomed to hold his
own.

At the striking of a clock in the room behind him he turned as though a
voice had spoken, and left the stone balcony on which he had been
waiting. His spurs rang as he stepped into the room behind it. The floor
was uncarpeted, and shone like ebony.

He glanced around him as one unfamiliar with his surroundings. It was a
large apartment, and lofty, but it contained very little furniture--a
couch, two or three chairs, a writing-table; on the walls, several
strangely shaped weapons; on the mantelpiece a couple of foils.

He smiled as his look fell upon these, and, crossing the room, he took
one of them up, and tested it between his hands.

At the quiet opening of the door he wheeled, still holding it. A woman
stood a moment upon the threshold; then slowly entered. She was little
more than a girl but the cold dignity of her demeanour imparted to her
the severity of more advanced years. Her face was like marble, white,
pure, immobile; but there was a touch of pathos ab