d on principle to such a course of events. Still,
she was saying, a moment or two later:

"And in the Payne fort on the Three Winds Road--I suppose you never feel
lonely there?"

"Why fort, if one might know?"

"I've been told that you were awfully well barricaded there, prepared to
stand any sort of siege."

Canning seemed quite amused. He declared, on the contrary, that neglect
and unpopularity were his portion in a strange land.

"I'm an invalid on sick-leave," said he, "and my orders are to go to
bed. Please don't smile, for it's all quite true ..."

He appeared to develop a certain interest in the moonlit talk. He
proceeded in a voice and manner no longer purely civil:

"And, to bare my soul to you, I'm no fonder of being lonely than another
man.... Do you know that, but for Kerr, you're my one acquaintance in
all this part of the world? What shall we say of that? I sit at dinner,
consumed by blue devils. I emerge, and behold, you walk across the
lobby. Haven't I some right to feel that the gods are with me even at
the Beach?"

Perchance she might have given him some information there, but instead
she laughed musically.

"The god of the pretty speeches, at any rate! Must I tell you that you
didn't look quite overjoyed when dear Willie came dragging you up?"

"I've no doubt I looked all sorts of ways, for I'd never felt more unfit
for any society, including my own. The more is my debt to you for
chasing my devils away.... But perhaps I owe you no thanks after all, as
one guesses that you do these little services for others without any
particular effort."

Carlisle glanced at him, smiling a little from her dusky eyes.

"Your experience is that most people find it a great effort to speak
pleasantly to you, I suppose?"

"Again I point out to you that our talk is not of most people, but of
you."

"Oh! And is there something particularly original about me? This grows
exciting."

"I, for one, think that beauty is always original," said Canning, with
sufficient impersonality, but no more.... "Still, we know, of course,
that unaided it cannot drive the blues of others very far."

"After the sugar-coating comes the pill. Tell me in what way I have been
deficient."

"Ah, that's yet to learn. To be charming by habit is an agreeable thing;
but you haven't convinced me yet, you know, that you know how to
be kind."

Her lashes fell before his masculine gaze; she did not answer. About
them was the sweet hu