his way,
but he had been always rough. Her own emotions had always lain buried
deeply, and now they had been called to life she longed for the natural
expression of her love through the medium of physical things, by word
and touch.

"Now for my reward," Vardri said. "I want to take your hair down."

Arithelli bent her head towards him without speaking and he drew the
pins, and undid the braid with deft fingers, spreading it out till it
covered her as with a veil.

"If only I could paint you! How beautiful you are to-night, but how
still and cold! Fatalite, tell me you love me a little, _mon coeur_!"

She put her arms round his neck, laying her cheek against his. "_Mon
ami_, I love you!"

He held her in his arms as one holds a child, rocking her to and fro.
"_Voila cherie_!" he whispered. "After to-morrow I shall have you
always, I shall never let you go again. My dream is coming true."

Arithelli listened with dry eyes and an aching heart. She was past
crying, and her brain felt curiously reasonable and alert. She could
not send him from her at once, yet with every passing second Death drew
stealthily nearer and nearer. Time swept on relentless and inflexible.

"Perhaps you will be disappointed in me one of these days, find me
depressing and full of moods. I've always been so lonely, you know,
till I met you. _Je suis une ame detachee_."

"Never again while I'm alive! I think of you and with you. When you
are happy I know it, and when you are miserable I know it too.
Fatalite! Fatalite! believe that I don't want anything in return.
I'll wait on you, work for you, lie, starve, steal, do anything. I
only want to know you're there, to have the right to serve you, to feel
you don't hate me. I couldn't go on living it I lost you. Since the
first day I saw you at the Hippodrome you've haunted me. I led Don
Juan down to the entrance to the ring. You don't remember? How should
you? I've never forgotten! You smiled and thanked me. You looked so
strange beside Estelle and those other women."

He was kneeling beside her, his lips pressed against the hollow of her
arm, from which the loose red sleeve had slipped back to above the
elbow. Under his passionate words Arithelli sat like a being
entranced, unseeing, unhearing. The inscrutable eyes set in the rigid
face gave her the likeness to some carven thing.

"Fatalite! Fatalite!"

The sound of his voice came to her as from a distance. She rou