the background of that wandering youth that he had so simply pictured. And she thought it was no wonder that he drank to excess occasionally. And then she wondered again if he made a habit of taking morphia. It startled her a little to see how much she cared about it.
Dane came back to her and sat down carefully beyond the reach of hands, as he had done before, and began to talk easily of his travels in the East. She listened fascinated to his impersonal account of men he had met, situations he had been in, and forces working in China and Japan. She had heard enough to be able to ask intelligent questions, and the time slipped by. It was he who thought of it first.
“What time do you have to be in?” he asked. “I mustn’t keep you here too late.”
She was not accustomed to men who considered the hours for her.
“Twelve o’clock. What is it now?”
“Nearly half-past ten.”
“Oh, I’d better go. It’s rather heavy walking.”
She had a funny sense of frustration as he went into the tent to get a lantern. She wondered why. When he came out again he thought of the fire, and covered it up carefully, for the undergrowth about was still dry enough to catch. Then they set off into the sooty blackness of the ravine. There was something extraordinarily intimate about the compressed isolation of that little gully. It shut them off from the world as completely as if they were on a remote island. Ferns and creepers gave it a jungle fascination. The trees met so thickly overhead that not a starbeam twinkled through. The rumble of the surf was smothered to a distant monotone in the heavy stillness.
Valerie felt her pulses beating faster and faster, her
