self--hundreds of lakes, I guess, running through the forests like
Venetian canals."

"I would not be surprised if you told me you had been in Venice,"
he replied. "To-day is your birthday--your twentieth. Have you
lived all those years here?"

He repressed his desire to question her, because he knew that she
understood that to be a part of his promise to her. In what he now
asked her he could not believe that he was treading upon
prohibited ground, and in the face of their apparent innocence he
was dismayed at the effect his words had upon her. It seemed to
him that her eyes flinched when he spoke, as if he had struck at
her. There passed over her face the look which he had come to
dread: a swift, tense betrayal of the grief which he knew was
eating at her soul, and which she was fighting so courageously to
hide from him. It had come and gone in a flash, but the pain of it
was left with him. She smiled at him a bit tremulously.

"I understand why you ask that," she said, "and it is no more than
fair that I should tell you. Of course you are wondering a great
deal about me. You have just asked yourself how I could ever hear
of such a place as Venice away up here among the Indians. Why, do
you know"--she leaned forward, as if to whisper a secret, her blue
eyes shilling with a sudden laughter--"I've even read the 'Lives'
of Plutarch, and I'm waiting patiently for the English to bang a
few of those terrible Lucretia Borgias who call themselves
militant suffragettes!"

"I--I--beg your pardon," he stammered helplessly.