exquisite lines and graceful turn of hand, arm and body, or the flower-
like turn of the neck, were the very harmony and poetry of life. But she
was terribly provoking too; and he realized that she was an unconscious
coquette, that her spirit loved mastery as his did.

Denzil could not know this, however. It was impossible for him to
analyse the natures of these two people. He had instinct, but not enough
to judge the whole situation, and so for two months after Carnac
disappeared he had lived a life of torture. Again and again he had
determined to tell Junia the story of Tarboe's brother, but instinctive
delicacy stopped him. He could not tell her the terrible story which
had robbed him of all he loved and had made him the avenger of the dead.
A half-dozen times after she came back from John Grier's office, with
slightly heightening colour, and the bright interest in her eyes, and had
gone about the garden fondling the flowers, he had started towards her;
but had stopped short before her natural modesty. Besides, why should he
tell her? She had her own life to make, her own row to hoe. Yet, as the
weeks passed, it seemed he must break upon this dangerous romance; and
then suddenly she went to visit her sick aunt in the Far West. Denzil
did not know, however, that, in John Grier's office as she had gone over
figures of a society in which she was interested, the big hand of Tarboe
had suddenly closed upon her fingers, and that his head bent down beside
hers for one swift instant, as though he would whisper to her. Then she
quickly detached herself, yet smiled at him, as she said reprovingly:

"You oughtn't to do that. You'll spoil our friendship."

She did not wait longer. As he stretched out his hands to her, his face
had gone pale: she vanished through the doorway, and in forty-eight hours
was gone to her sick aunt. The autumn had come and the winter and the