had the telepathic mind--that the girl admired and liked Tarboe. He did
not stop to question how or why she should like two people so different
as Tarboe and himself.

The faint colour of the crimsoning maples was now in her cheek; the light
of the autumn evening was in her eyes; the soft vitality of September was
in her motions. She was attractively alive. Her hair waved back from
her forehead with natural grace; her small feet, with perfect ankles,
made her foothold secure and sedately joyous. Her brown hand--yet not so
brown after all--held her hat lightly, and was, somehow, like a signal
out of a world in which his hopes were lost for the present.

She was dearer to him than all the rest of the world; and he had in his
hand what kept them apart--a sentence of death, unless he escaped from
the wanton calling him to fulfil duties into which he had been tricked.
Luzanne Larue had a terrible hold over him. He gripped the letter in his
pocket as a Hopi Indian does the body of a poisonous snake. The rosy
sunset gave the girl's face a reflected spiritual glamour; it made her,
suddenly, a bewildering figure. Somehow, she seemed a great distance
from him--as one detached and unfamiliar.

He suddenly felt she knew more than it was possible she should know.
As she flashed an inquiry into his eyes, it was as though she said: "Why
don't you tell me everything, and I will help you?" Or, was it: "Why
don't you tell me everything and end it all?" He longed to press her to
his breast, as he had once done in the woods when Denzil had been
injured, but that was not possible. The thought of that far-off day made
him say to her, rather futilely:

"How is Denzil? How is Denzil?"