For, as he looked at her
sitting in his office, her perfect health, her slim boyishness,
her exquisite lines and graceful turn of hand, arm and body, or the
flower-like turn of the neck, were the very harmony and poetry of life.
But she was terribly provoking too; and he realized that she was an
unconscious coquette, that her spirit loved mastery as his did.

Denzil could not know this, however. It was impossible for him to
analyse the natures of these two people. He had instinct, but not
enough to judge the whole situation, and so for two months after Carnac
disappeared he had lived a life of torture. Again and again he had
determined to tell Junia the story of Tarboe's brother, but instinctive
delicacy stopped him. He could not tell her the terrible story which had
robbed him of all he loved and had made him the avenger of the dead.
A half-dozen times after she came back from John Grier's office, with
slightly heightening colour, and the bright interest in her eyes, and
had gone about the garden fondling the flowers, he had started towards
her; but had stopped short before her natural modesty. Besides, why
should he tell her? She had her own life to make, her own row to hoe.
Yet, as the weeks passed, it seemed he must break upon this dangerous
romance; and then suddenly she went to visit her sick aunt in the Far
West. Denzil did not know, however, that, in John Grier's office as she
had gone over figures of a society in which she was interested, the big
hand of Tarboe had suddenly closed upon her fingers, and that his head
bent down beside hers for one swift instant, as though he would whisper
to her. Then she quickly detached herself, yet smiled at him, as she
said reprovingly:

"You oughtn't to do that. You'll spoil our friendship."

She did not wait longer. As he stretched out his hands to her, his face
had gone pale: she vanished through the doorway, and in forty-eight
hours was gone to her sick aunt. The autumn had come and the winter and
the spring, and the spring was almost gone when she returned; and, with
her return, Catastrophe lifted its head in the person of Denzil.

Perhaps it was imperative instinct that brought Junia back in an hour
coincident with Carnac's return--perhaps. In any case, there it was.
They had both returned, as it were, in the self-same hour, each having
endured a phase of emotion not easy to put on paper.

Denzil told her of Carnac's return, and she went to the house where
Carnac's