told them, too; nay, the very fire-flies would have conspired together and made the night more dark. And, instead of a communion such as that, there had been an aimless chit-chat, an awkwardness that was sentient, and an embarrassment terminated only by a chill "Good-night." Truly Zut, who had treed a hedgehog, was to be envied. His evening at least had not been squandered and misspent.

The morrow differed from the day preceding merely in this, that not for one instant during it did Tancred have an opportunity of seeing either Mrs. Lyeth or Liance alone. After tiffin they were inseparate. And Tancred, who had made plans for the afternoon, then made plans for the evening. But the hope which buoyed him was idle. The evening which followed was a counterpart of the one that had gone before, save in this, the general, having no papers to look over, held forth as generals will, and Zut searched for a hedgehog in vain. That night, for the first time, Tancred entered fully into the feelings of Tantalus and those of Sisyphus too. He was dumbly exasperated, the more so perhaps in that he divined that to one cleverer than he no obstacle would exist. If a woman has an ear, and as a rule women have, there is always a way to get at it. Unfortunately for Tancred, the way in this case was by no means clear, and what helped to confuse him was the fact that he was impatient to find it at once, no, but there and then, and without delay. And as in his exasperation he dashed his head against the pillow, he told himself that he had been abrupt, that he had unmasked his batteries too soon, that he had frightened where he had meant to charm. Of Liance he gave no thought whatever, except to decide that she was a nuisance. And such is the selfishness of man, that he wished she would topple over again and sprain a joint; in short, that anything might happen which would keep her to her room and out of the way of Mrs. Lyeth. The idea that the general's bride-elect might be keeping her purposely at her side was one that never occurred to him. She is a nuisance, he decided, and dismissed her from his thoughts.

Before he fell asleep his mind was clear as to one thing; to wit, that in a small household it is more difficult to be alone with one particular person than in a household where there are many. Whether he was correct or not is a matter of the smallest possible importance. The next morning, when Atcheh appeared with coffee and fruit, he was aware that he had wandered through an assortment of dreams in which the rafflesia and the general were confusedly connected; at one moment the general had changed into that unhallowed flower, at another the rafflesia had bristled with the moustaches of his host. And as he rose from these fancies to his coffee he encountered a scheme which he detained and examined. It was not particularly shrewd, yet at the moment it seemed luminous to him. It was to the effect that if he were inhibited from private speech with Mrs. Lyeth, there was no reason in the world why he should not write. And as he mused, from the porch beyond rose the sound of her voice.

He was too far away to hear what she was saying, and, parenthetically, had he been nearer he would not have listened. But now the intonation, the trailing accent of her speech affected him as a balm. The irritation faded, as irritation ever does; he found some paper, and as, to the accompaniment of her voice, he prepared to write one of those letters in which punctuation is disregarded and sequence of idea forgot, he heard her waving inflection cut by a harsher note. It was the general, he knew. For the moment he wondered why he had not already gone to the consulate, but presently the noise of hoofs, the creak of wheels, a shrill cry, and the hiss of a whip seemed to announce that the conveyance which took the consul each morning to Siak was at the door.

Tancred's window did not give on the road, but on the coppice and the pavilion, yet when again he caught the creak of wheels it demanded little imagination on his part to picture the general sitting bolt upright in a gharry, driving to the sun-smitten town beyond. And as the clatter of hoofs fainted in the distance, Tancred took up the pen again. The letter which he then succeeded in producing was one similar to what we have all of us written and all of us received—a clear call of love, in which the words are less jotted than shaken from the end of the pen. Its transcription here is needless.

A love-letter which can pleasure anyone save the recipient proceeds not from the heart but the head. Moreover, when Tancred began it he had not the faintest idea what he intended to say, and when it was finished he did not remember what he had written. Oh, sweethearts and swains! mind ye of this: when a love-letter differs from that, it emanates from a poet or a fraud. Tancred was neither. He was simply a young man suddenly enthralled by the charm of a woman older than himself. He intended no wrong, and if you or I or any other implacable moralist had happened that way and told him, as would have been our duty, that he was betraying the sacredest of trusts, the confidence of a host, he would have exhibited the surprise of a child frowned at for innocent prattle. Bear with him then; of wrong he intended none. It is the essence of crime that it be committed with malice aforethought, that the intention to commit it be clear. In the present case the intention was wholly lacking. Tancred was carried along by one of those unreasoning impulses which the psychologist recognizes and cannot explain. And that impulse, after throwing him at Mrs. Lyeth's feet and dictating a letter to her, left his conscience unruffled and at peace.

His pulse, however, still was stirred. And, the letter completed, he was not in a greater hurry to do anything else than to get it safely in her hand. The manner in which this was to be accomplished was another matter. He might offer it to her in person, or he might leave it in her room. He might even watch his opportunity and slip it into her hand; but, for that, he immediately reflected he would have to wait the opportunity—a tedious operation at best; and, moreover, was he not in haste? And as he mused he remembered that Dugald Maule, a New Yorker like himself, finding himself in similar strait, had, under the very nose of a duenna, deliberately abstracted a handkerchief from his inamorata's pocket, and, wrapping a letter up in it, handed it back with the civilest inquiry as to whether she had not just let the handkerchief fall? That was a remarkably neat trick, Tancred told himself, but somehow it seemed to demand a degree of assurance of which he felt unpossessed. Besides, it was a trick, and as such distasteful to him. And as he twirled his moustache, vaguely perplexed, undecided in what way to act, determining that it were better perhaps to leave it all to chance, he caught a glimpse of Mrs. Lyeth entering the pavilion alone. She was in white from head to foot, alluring as spring, and doubtless every whit as fragrant; she moved easily, her body erect and unswayed, and as Tancred caught sight of her he would have taken his chances then and there, but almost simultaneously he saw Liance following behind. In the annoyance he filliped forefinger and thumb together, and tried to possess his soul with patience. It was not impossible that in a moment the girl might go, and then his time would come. Meanwhile it behooved him to be careful and to remain unseen. But no, Liance must have seated herself at the other side of the pavilion, for he could hear Mrs. Lyeth address her, and the murmurs of the girl's replies. Presumably they would remain together until tiffin, and if before tiffin the note was not delivered, another afternoon, the evening too, perhaps, would be wasted and lost.

And as he thought of this, behind him he divined rather than heard Atcheh's noiseless tread. He turned at once. Another idea had come to him, one on which he determined to act at once. The "boy" was already retreating, a tray in his hand.

"Dja keno," Tancred called.

On shipboard he had