on Roscoe, then withdrawn again. On him the effect was so far disturbing
that he became a little pale, but I noticed that he met her glance
unflinchingly and then looked at me, as if to see in how far I had been
affected by her speech. I think I confessed to nothing in my face.

Justine Caron was lost in the scene before us. She had, I fancy,
scarcely heard half that had been said. Roscoe said to her presently:
"You like it, do you not?"

"Like it?" she said. "I never saw anything so wonderful."

"And yet it would not be so wonderful without humanity there," rejoined
Mrs. Falchion. "Nature is never complete without man. All that would
be splendid without the mills and the machinery and Boldrick's cable,
but it would not be perfect: it needs man--Phil Boldrick and Company in
the foreground. Nature is not happy by itself: it is only brooding and
sorrowful. You remember the mountain of Talili in Samoa, Mr. Roscoe, and
the valley about it: how entrancing yet how melancholy it is. It always
seems to be haunted, for the natives never live in the valley. There is
a tradition that once one of the white gods came down from heaven, and
built an altar, and sacrificed a Samoan girl--though no one ever knew
quite why: for there the tradition ends."

I felt again that there was a hidden meaning in her words; but Roscoe
remained perfectly still. It seemed to me that I was little by little
getting the threads of his story. That there was a native girl; that the
girl had died or been killed; that Roscoe was in some way--innocently I
dared hope--connected with it; and that Mrs. Falchion held the key to the
mystery, I was certain. That it was in her mind to use the mystery,
I was also certain. But for what end I could not tell. What had passed