meant, since he had come to Algeria in search of
peace. When first he landed, and until the day of Victoria's letter, he
had been enormously interested in the panorama of the East which passed
before his eyes. He had eagerly noticed each detail of colour and
strangeness, but now, though the London lethargy was gone, in its place
had been born a disturbing restlessness which would not let him look
impersonally at life as at a picture.

Questioning himself as he lay awake in the Oran hotel, with windows open
to the moonlight, Stephen was forced to admit that the picture was
blurred because Victoria had gone out of it. Her figure had been in the
foreground when first he had seen the moving panorama, and all the rest
had been only a magical frame for her. The charm of her radiant youth,
and the romance of the errand which had brought her knocking, when he
knocked, at the door of the East, had turned the glamour into glory. Now
she had vanished; and as her letter said, it might be that she would
never come back. The centre of interest was transferred to the unknown
place where she had gone, and Stephen began to see that his impatience
to be moving was born of the wish not only to know that she was safe,
but to see her again.

He was angry with himself at this discovery, and almost he was angry
with Victoria. If he had not her affairs to worry over, Africa would be
giving him the rest cure he had expected. He would be calmly enjoying
this run through beautiful country, instead of chafing to rush on to
the end. Since, in all probability, he could do the girl no good, and
certainly she could do him none, he half wished that one or the other
had crossed from Marseilles to Algiers on a different ship. What he
needed was peace, not any new and feverish personal interest in life.
Yes, decidedly he wished that he had never known Victoria Ray.

But the wish did not live long. Suddenly her face, her eyes, came before
him in the night. He heard her say that she would give him "half her
star," and his heart grew sick with longing.

"I hope to Heaven I'm not going to love that girl," he said aloud to the
darkness. If no other woman came into his life, he might be able to get
through it well enough with Margot. He could hunt and shoot, and do
other things that consoled men for lack of something better. But if--he
knew he must not let there be an "if." He must go on thinking of
Victoria Ray as a child, a charming little friend whom he