air. It lay like a shining sword across his path, and
for a second he paused. Then he passed over it, sure-footed and
confident, and plunged again into darkness. When he reached the end of
the descent, he was breathing heavily, and his eyes were alight with a
strange fire. He pulled upon the door and put aside the thick curtain
with the swift movements of a man who can brook no delay. He passed into
the long, dim room beyond with its single red lamp burning at the far
end. He prepared to pass on to the door that led out upon the gallery and
so to the grand staircase. But before he had gone half-a-dozen paces he
stopped. It was no sound that arrested, no visible circumstance of any
sort. Yet, as if at a word of command, he halted. His quick look swept
around the room like the gleam of a rapier, and suddenly he swung upon
his heel, facing that still, red light.

Seconds passed before he moved again. Then swiftly and silently he walked
up the room. Close to the lamp was a deep settee on which the spots of a
leopard skin showed in weird relief. At one end of the settee, against
the leopard skin, something gold was shining. Saltash's look was fixed
upon it as he drew near.

He reached the settee treading noiselessly. He stood beside it, looking
down. And over his dark face with its weary lines and cynical mouth, its
melancholy and its bitterness, there came a light such as neither man nor
woman had ever seen upon it before. For there before him, curled up like
a tired puppy, her tumbled, golden hair lying in ringlets over the
leopard skin, was Toby, asleep in the dim, red lamplight.

For minutes he stood and gazed upon her before she awoke. For minutes
that strange glory came and went over his watching face. He did not stir,
did not seem even to breathe. But the fact of his presence must have
pierced her consciousness at last, for in the end quite quietly,
supremely naturally, the blue eyes opened and fixed upon him.

"Hullo!" said Toby sleepily. "Time to get up?"

And then, in a moment, she had sprung upright on the couch, swift dismay
on her face.

"I--I thought we were on the yacht! I--I--I never meant to go to sleep
here! I came to speak to you, sir. I wanted to see you."

He put a restraining hand upon her thin young shoulder, and his touch
vibrated as with some unknown force controlled.

"All right, Nonette!" he said, and his voice had the same quality; it was
reassuring but oddly unsteady. "Sorry I kept you wa