"Will you kiss me once, please," she said simply, and she stood with her
arms hanging at her side, whilst he kissed her on the lips.

"Thank you," she said. "Now will you go?"

He left her standing in the little room and led the horses back to the
inn. That afternoon he took the train to London.




CHAPTER III

IN BOMBAY


It was not until a day late in January eight years afterwards that Thresk
saw the face of Stella Derrick again; and then it was only in a portrait.
He came upon it too in a most unlikely place. About five o'clock
upon that afternoon he drove out of the town of Bombay up to one of the
great houses on Malabar Hill and asked for Mrs. Carruthers. He was shown
into a drawing-room which looked over Back Bay to the great buildings of
the city, and in a moment Mrs. Carruthers came to him with her hands
outstretched.

"So you've won. My husband telephoned to me. We do thank you! Victory
means so much to us."

The Carruthers were a young couple who, the moment after they had
inherited the larger share in the great firm of Templeton & Carruthers,