ensued through the bars.

"It's all right now, sir," said the guide after a minute; "you walk
right in." The door was now ajar. I went forwards and pushed it; it
gave way easily. I stepped inside, and it swung to behind me. Inside
the light was red--scarlet. A lamp was standing somewhere at the side
of the room, behind thin, red curtains. As I entered, another door at
the end of the room swung to on a retreating form. Some one had gone
out. The room seemed empty. It was very small, and an enormous bed
took up nearly the whole of it. There seemed no window at all
anywhere: the low ceiling almost touched my head. I stopped still. A
very slight movement somewhere near me seemed to speak of another's
presence.

"Suzee," I said under my breath.

At the sound of my voice there was a delighted cry, and the next
moment a little form in scarlet drapery threw itself at my feet.

"Treevor, Treevor," came in Suzee's voice; and I bent over the little
scarlet bundle, lifted her up, and pressed my lips on her hair. It
smelt of roses, just as it had done in the tea-shop at Sitka, and
carried me back there on the wings of its fragrance, as scents alone
can do.

She clung to me in a wild fervour of emotion. I felt her little hands
dutch me desperately. She kissed my arm and wrist passionately,
seeming not to dare to lift her face to mine. This wild abandonment,
this frenzy of hungered, starving love, what a sharp contrast to the
cool, slow surrender of Viola, if surrender it could be called, that
lending of the beautiful body, with total reserve of the spirit! Even
in that moment of this wild lavishing of love from another, as the
little breast leapt wildly against my own, a fierce pulse of jealous
longing went through me as I thought of that unconquered something
that _she_ had never yielded to me.

Suzee hardly seemed to expect my caresses in return, she only seemed
to wish to pour her own upon me in the wildest, most lavish excess.
At last, when she grew a little calmer, I held her at arm's length
from me and looked at her.

"Now, Suzee, I want you to tell me what you are doing in this awful
place. How did you get here, to begin with?"

"Oh, Mister Treevor, I have had such trouble, such awful trouble, you
will never believe; but when I ran--when I came to Mrs. Hackett she
was very good to me, only she wanted to sell me for two hundred and
fifty dollars to Chinaman. I said, 'No, I belong to rich Englishman.
He send you more