could hear was. 'So long as you have them I will not
speak with you.'"

"That seems pretty plain and clear. And yet?" said the Colonel, fondling
the turquoises, "nobody can say there's any harm in such things,
especially if you don't wear them."

"Colonel, they are my great temptation. I don't know that I wouldn't
wear them. And when I wear them I can think of nothing sacred, nothing
holy. When they were given to me I used--I used to get up in the night
to look at them."

"Shall I lay it before the Almighty? That bracelet's got a remarkably
good clasp."

"Oh no--no! I must part with them. To-night I can do it, to-night--"

"There's nobody on this ship that will give you any price for them."

"I would not think of selling them. It would be sending them from my
hands to do harm to some other poor creature, weaker than I!"

"You can't return them to-night."

"I wouldn't return them. That would be the same as keeping them."

"Then what--oh, I see!" exclaimed Markin. "You want to give them to the
Army. Well, in my capacity, on behalf of General Booth--"

"No," cried Laura with sudden excitement, "not that either. I will give
them to nobody. But this is what I will do!" She seized the bracelet and
flung it far out into the opaline track of the vessel, and the smaller
objects, before her companion could stop her, followed it. Then he
caught her wrist.

"Stop!" he cried. "You've gone off your head--you've got fever. You're
acting wicked with that jewellery. Stop and let us reason it out
together."

She already had the turquoises, and with a jerk of her left hand, she
freed it and threw them after the rest. The necklace caught the handrail
as it fell, and Markin made a vain spring to save it. He turned and
stared at Laura, who stood fighting the greatest puissance of feeling
she had known, looking at the pearls. As he stared she kissed them
twice, and then, leaning over the ship's side, let them slowly slide out
of her fingers and fall into the waves below. The moonlight gave them a
divine gleam as they fell. She turned to Markin with tears in her eyes.
"Now," she faltered, "I can be happy again. But not to-night."

CHAPTER XXVIII

While the Coromandel was throbbing out her regulation number of knots
towards Colombo, October was passing over Bengal. It went with lethargy,
the rains were too close on its heels; but at the end of the long hot
days, when the resplendent sun struck down on the glossy trees an