floor, and sighing.

Peter might have paused in his rapid meditations long enough to be
aware that, here he was, dropped--plump--into the center of another
ring of romance; nothing having separated him from his last love but
two misdirected revolver shots, the warning boom of a gunboat's bow
cannon, and a mad chase across Victoria Bay.

Holding hands breaks no known law; yet Peter was not entirely aware
that he was committing this act, as his eyes, set and hard, stared out
of the window at the passing pagodas with their funny turned-up roofs.

His mind was working on other matters. Perhaps for the first time
since the _Persian Gulf_ had dropped anchor to the white sand of
Victoria Harbor's bottom, he began to realize the grim seriousness of
Romola Borria's warning. He was hemmed in. He was helpless.

An hour to live! An hour alive! But he was willing to make the very
best of that hour.

Absently, then by degrees not so absently, he alternately squeezed and
loosened the small, cool hands of the maid from Macassar. And she
returned the pressure with a timid confidence that made him stop and
consider for a moment something that had entirely slipped his mind
during the past few days.

Was he playing quite squarely with Eileen Lorimer? Had he been
observing perhaps the word but not the letter of his self-assumed oath?
On the other hand, mightn't it be possible that Eileen Lorimer had
ceased to care for him? With time and the miles stretching between
them, wasn't it quite possible that she had shaken herself, recognized
her interest in him as one only of passing infatuation, and, perhaps
already, had given her love to some other?

A silly little rhyme of years ago occurred to him:

Love me close! Love me tight! _But_
Love me when I'm out of sight!

And perhaps because Peter had fallen into one of his reasoning moods,
he asked himself whether it was fair to carry the flirtation any
further with the girl snuggled beside him. He knew that the hearts of
Oriental girls open somewhat more widely to the touch of affection than
their Western sisters. And it was not in the nature of women of the
East to indulge extensively in the Western form of idle flirtation.
The lowering of the eyelids, the flickering of a smile, had meaning and
depth in this land.

Was this girl flirting with him, or was hers a deeper interest? That
was the question! He took the latter view.

And because he knew, from his own exp