A WOULD-BE PILGRIM.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 31, 30 July 1892, Page 758

A WOULD-BE PILGRIM.

BY

C.B BURGIN.

CHAPTER I. ND so, Melissa, you want to be a missionary fejffrTl to Timbnctoo, or some other equally remote place. Throw it up. Listen to me.’ yff'al'-. Melissa smiled. ‘ Will nothing make you change your wilful little mind ?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘Oh, well, if you must sacrifice yourself, -> you must. That fat Armenian is too many for me.’ ‘ I think so, Jack. His arguments, naturally carry more weight. I want an object.’ ‘ A more disgusting one than that loathsome Armenian I can’t imagine.’ Jack picked up a gaudy potato bug, and hurled it into space at an imaginary Armenian. A crimson sunset dyed the brown waters of the Ottawa in blood. On the opposite shore, the Laurentian mountains, long, low, and snakelike, lifted their sinuous crests of green to the sky. Frogs chirped merrily in the creek ; a bellow as of belated bulls came from their larger brethren in the marsh ; and the mosquitoes buzzed around in swarms. Melissa waved them away with a fan, as she languidly rocked in her chair. The young man returned to the verandah, and nervously stood behind Melissa. ‘As old Sweetcrumb said in his last Sunday’s sermon, Melissa, “ I should like to make a few remarks.'’ ’ ‘ Very well, Jack. If I’m the subject of them, they’re rather unnecessary.’ ‘ You might hear them first.' ‘ Don’t quarrel, Jack,' Melissa implored, ceasing a moment in her inconsequent rocking. ‘ i should like to make a few remarks—as I said before. You— ’ his hand shook slightly as it rested on the back of her chair— ‘ You know 1 love you—you’ve known it all your life.’ •Jack, I thought it was something new.’ Melissa’s pretty eyes flashed ominously. Jack did not see them, so he persevered. ‘Of course,’said Jack. ‘ Well, it isn’t. Awful form, no doubt, to be in earnest. Hearts don’t matter much—not a shuck. But I'm in deadly earnest. I love you too much to talk about it. I’ve come to the conclusion ’ ‘ I wish you had, Jack.’ ‘ That you're the one girl I care for ; I haven’t half-a-dozen sweethearts like the fellows up at the Corners, and you know it. You’re the one girl 1 could ride about all over the world for—like those Tennysonian beggars in the Idylls, you know—and I’m not going to be snubbed out of it. Of course, you’re too good for me, Melissa. Still, if you share your life with me, we’ll average up the goodness, and come out all right. Fact is, we’ve both too much money—it’s spoiled us. If our dads hadn’t “ struck phosphates ” it would have been ever so much better for you and me. They did make their niles, worse luck. It’s ruined your life so far. It shan’t go on doing so.’ ‘ Oh,’ she said, with a curl of her little red lip. ‘ Really, Jack, you’re quite impossible.’

Jack came round to the front of the chair. He was pale. ‘ When a man’s made up his mind about the one thing lie wants, he's bound to have it,’ he said, with a resolute compression of the lips. ‘ I’ve loved you ever since we were children. Prosperity and the European tour have filled your pretty little head with nonsense ; they’ve been too much for you. Because dozens of people have failed to touch vour heart, you think you’ve a mission to go among those one-horse Armenians, (io, if you like, only I shall go too. We shall be quite a cheerful little family party, and sing Moody and Sankey in Armenian.’ ‘ Really, .lack, you’re too absurd. Mr Hagopian will be here to-morrow to arrange details.' ‘ Hagopian,’he said disgustedly. ‘l’d like to arrange some details for him—with tar and feathers in the programme.’ She laughed. ... ‘ D’you know what that great and good man is doing at this moment ?’ he asked. ‘ Praying, probably, “ The prayers of the righteous, ’ you know.’ , , ‘ He's playing poker down at Labelles. ‘ Did you—did you take a hand, Jack?’ ‘ No,’ savagely. ‘“ln the game that ensued I di<i not take a’hand.'’ Your friend’s getting the worst of it. Very much the worst of it.’ . ‘ Poor, simple, unsophisticated child of nature. Was his language picturesque, Jack ’’ ‘ It had all the wild, untrammelled, poetic adjectival lluem-v of a child of nature certainly, especially when he. lost.’ • Oh, then, he is losing? ‘ Losing I Melissa, have you lost all pride in your countrymen, that you think they couldn’t skin an Armenian ? He wanted to teach them simple little Turkish games ; but they declined, and taught him a few Canadian ones instead. He’s playing poker, or thinks he is.’ • The saints must relax, Jack, just to give the sinners a show.’ , , ‘ Hagopian’s show enough, snakes alive. ‘Jack, your conversation savours of slang. The Grand lonrhnu not improved you; civilisation is thrown away upon such a primeval savage. You grow ruder every day.’ •it s that Armenian Pecksniff. He'sso oily this weather. It oozes out of him by the bucket.’ Melissa tapped her foot impatiently. ‘ I blush for you. Why didn’t you take in this oppressed stranger when he came here to lecture ?’ • Because he took me in.’ ‘Ah, you've no faith in goodness.’ ‘ I've no faith in converted Armenians, if he’s a sample of them. They come over here with a smatteiing of English,

talk about their sufferings, and wheedle money out of us to build schools in the Harden of Eden. The fellow’s after you.’ w ‘ You’re too absurd. How would it sound if he made love to me in Armenian? Lord Byron was very fond of it.’ ‘Of what ? Armenian, or of being made love to ?’ Melissa rose disgustedly. * You’re hopeless to-night. Let us join the fireflies.’ She gathered her white bkirts about her, and stepped down from the verandah, a tall, slim girl, with brown eyes which had never softened beneath a lover’s glance. Melissa had seen many young men in Europe. She was content that they should remain there. She found young men very much alike in every clime. They all told her the same story until she was unutterably bored. And now she had come back, and Jack was as bad as the others. There was a great deal of truth in what Jack Miller said. She had too much money. As a telegraph operator in the village store, she would have found existence far more endurable. Now, with an income which sounded fabulous in dollars, she simply tolerated life. Something in the beauty of the night touched Melissa with a vague sense of pain. Unrest and discontent were her portion. She knew not love, and would not know it. The waters of the Ottawa plashed musically against the wooden piles knee-deep in the flood. A whip poor-will gave forth its weird, haunting wail. Myriad fireflies flitted between the trees or sank into the long grass, as the moon played upon the tin roofs of the French cottagers, and changed them into glorious seas of little shimmeiing waves and breakers. People sat about upon doorsteps, or lounged lazily in their gay little gardens. But they did not talk. The mysterious sweetness and beauty of the night filled them with quiet content. All but Melissa and Jack : they were unhappy. Melissa had never been unhsppy during the old halcyon days when Jack used to swim across the creek in the early summer dawn, and lure her out to the bush. Oh, the wild joy of those incense-breathing morns, the fallen fern-covered trees, the frisking of squirrels from trunk to trunk, the glinting sunlight through the long branches of the pines whose stately stems were still mocassined amid the fallen needles of last year ; the harsh cry of the jay as he mocked them from high up on a majestic cedar ; the gauzy threads of scarlet, and crimson, and gold of dragon flies flitting over the forest pool ; all these came back to her through the silence of forgotten years. The rapture, the delight, the cool, sweet, aromatic breath of the bush appealed to her once more, Again, she decked the scarred trunks, slain by forest fires, with festoons of ground-ivy, and long laces of Virginia creeper as it rambled in and out of the rocks. No, she was not unhappy then as she lay on her back, cradled in masses of maiden-hair, and gazed up through the black, palm-like stems into the high o’er-arching temple of intercostal boughs. Unhappiness had only appeared with the humiliating restraints enforced by civilisation and the possession of phosphates. ‘Me bein’ about to peter out M’lissa,’ her father had laboriously observed on his death bed, ‘ me bein’ about to peter out, you’ll have to hoe your own line, but you’ve got a golden hoe to do it with.’ Then Melissa’s progenitor had departed for the happy hunting grounds in pursuit of phantom phosphates. ‘ Run the whole show fur what it’s worth,’ was his dying injunction ; ‘ an’ if any darned confidence man plays it low down on you, jest sorter set Jack at him.’ bo Melissa became an heiress. She learned to value her complexion, and a great many other things. In course of time she also became aware that long lashes are very effective when fringing eyes of deepest, softest brown. But she had not yet discovered the secret of happiness. Perhaps she had left it behind her in the awful solitude of the bush.

‘ It is refreshing to come back to this Jack,’ she said, waking from her reverie, as they forsook the wharf and strolled down the road beneath Old Tollevent’s spreading elms. ‘ Yes,’ he said ; ‘ we’ve both been in the desert so long. There is no solitude like that of a crowd. See how fresh, and sweet, and cool it is I Everything whispers of peace—except ourselves. Look at those great shadows in the moonlight as they fall across the road. There are our own shadows beyond them, keeping step for step. And yet you want to leave here, to journey into the wilus from some fantastic idea of sacrifice, although happiness is at your feet. Melissa, don’t go. ’ ‘ Ah,’ she mourned, ‘ that is all you think of. Love I Happiness I What are they, Jack ? Shadows I A mirage I And yet—and yet—why didn’t you speaK before I went to Europe ?’ ‘W hy didn’t I speak ?’ He stopped in the middle of the road. Do you think I’m a cur ? Yon were young—inex-perienced-rich. You knew nothing of life when our parents struck phosphates. Dozens of times in the dewy, summer morns we’ve danced along this very road to school, barefooted lad and lassie, but loving one another. Now we •walk apart. Walk slowly and sadly. That cursed money caused all the mischief. We grew out of one another’s hearts. We threw aside something money couldn’t give us. We lost all faith in love, and hope, and" belief in goodness, and now, young as we are, we're old, Melissa, and—-bo>-ed I Good heavens! it’s too absurd. We can’t—at least you can’t—find anything worth living for except oily Armenians, whilst I murder trees. We’ve missed all the sweetness, the true meaning of life.’ She stopped also. • Yes,’ she said, looking up at him with troubled brown eyes full of a questioning pain. ‘We have missed something. Perhaps I shall find it in Armenia.’ •You will become Mrs Hagopian?’ he said, almost roughly. Then he took Melissa in his arms, and softly kissed her lips. For a moment she lay motionless like a brown lily on his breast. ‘At least. I’m the first,’ he said, his eyes shining, as he bounded away into the night without daring to look behind.

Melissa still stood in the middle of the road thinking. Life was an enigma. People had perpetually to ask themselves what it all meant. Had it any meaning ? Wasn’t the world an ant-heap ? Crush ! and the iron-shod hoof of circumstance scattered the ants or drove them into the dust. She was sick of the self-consciousness which is really self-love—which cannot see anyone pick up a pin without devoting the rest of the day to a subtle analysis of so extraordinary an action. But there was a blank in her life. Jack’s kiss had robbed her of something. It sealed her lips to all others. Love meant slavery. She would not resign her freedom at the bidding of any man ; and yet, wasn't falling in love the taking up of an empire—even grander than that pictured by a girl’s wildest dreams? What instrument so subtle to play upon, so full of harmonies and discords, as a man’s heart ? Yet it was dangerous work—very. She would have no more of it. Then she walked lingeringly home, went to bed, and dreamed of Jack. In the middle of the night she awoke. What right had Jack to kiss her ? and why had she lain passive in his arms for that brief moment? He was a coward to run away. What had induced him to commit such an outrage? How lightly his soft silken moustache had swept her cheek. Had it been bristly, she would never have forgiven him. A ray of moonlight streamed through the half-opened blind. Melissa put her finger to her lips timidly, curiously. The man's touch seemed still upon them. A spirit in the girl’s feet led her to the window. The garden gate swung to with a slight click, as she drew back the curtain. Jack I How handsome he looked in the moonlight ! What right had he to smoke, and thus pollute the lips which had touched her own ? They belonged to her—now. If she ever —she would make him give up smoking. What was he doing there in the middle of the night ? The red tip of his cigar glowed like a firefly, as he threw himself down on a rustic seat beneath the elm by the side of the verandah. How long did he intend to remain there I The wretch had smoked his cigar, and was surely going ? No ; he was lighting another. Ah, why did he fling it away ? She smiled. Jack always smoked good cigars. Perhaps he appreciated her more than tobacco. She was glad that the insidious comforter had failed him in his hour of need. His case must indeed be a serious one. But if he kept ramping about much longer he would alarm the house. Would he never go ? Would—why, the unabashed ruffian was shaking his fist at her window ! Then he returned to the seat, and flung himself down despondently, and groaned softly. She even fancied that a very wicked word floated upward to the window, and craved for admittance. That was better. Much better. Such presumption should not go unpunished. How delightfully unhappy he was I She stayed at the window until he crawled away with sunken head and laggard step. ‘Poor Jack,’ she said, ‘ that kiss surprised us ooth.’ Then she went back to bed, and dreamed again. CHAPTER 11. Melissa knew very little with reference to Sivas except that it was somewhere in Armenia. She wasn’t even quite sure as to the whereabouts of Armenia. Hitherto, Armenia had been but a vague place on maps. She thought, when she permitted herself to think at all about geographical distinctions, that it was somewhere in Asia Minor. There was nothing about its appearance to indicate that it had any special claims to attention. But Mr Hagopian, as he went around the little village of I’Orignal, clad in glossy broadcloth, and a fez like a chimney-pot, organised enthusiastic audiences for the Mechanics’ Institute. He made the inhabitants of I’Orignal see that their ignorance on the subject of Turkish oppression was a lasting disgrace, an indelible stigma. When Mr Hagopian could not get an audience to listen to him, which was frequently the case, he talked to Milette’s goat until that aggressive animal butted him out of the yard. But the goat died soon after. It ‘ took sick ’ in some mysterious way which none could fathom. Melissa sometimes envied the goat for its freedom from this world’s cares. She watched it thrown into the Ottawa and float away over the Long Sault Falls with pensive interest. It had, at any rate, escaped from Mr Hagopian ; but Melissa had given him a half-promise to go to Sivas to ‘ labour in the vineyard.’ She was not aware, as a matter of fact, whether there were any vineyards in Sivas, but didn’t like to ask Mr Hagopian. Mr Hagopian had represented to her that the American Mission Board would be only too glad to enrol so distinguished a recruit in the fields of missionary enterprise. ‘ Oh, it is very easy,’ he said, his small brown eyes twinkling with satisfaction. ‘ Oh, it is very easy. When you at Constantinople are, you make to take yourself round the Black Sea to Samsoun. Then you on the horse get (he didn’t say whether one stopped there all the time) for five, six, seven days. Oh, a bagatelle. It is the loveliest forest in the world. Then you make to come out of the forest, on the tops of the mountains. Not of the mountains so small as the Canadian mountains, but big, high, what you call “ bully ” mountains. Down into the plain, through the wheatfields, and into Sivas where the Governor makes to keep himself peacocks of a beauty exceeding to look at.’ ‘Yes, Mr Hagopian,’ interrupted Melissa, ‘but I don’t want to go all the way to Sivas merely to look at peafowl. There are plenty here, of both sexes.’ Mr Hagopian coughed. He had come to talk about something else. He nervously twisted his fez, buttoned and unbuttoned his long frock coat, and blinked like a cat in the sunlight. ‘ You will go there as the pilgrim who will shield the poor man from the Turk. You will make to yourself the beautiful Armenian tongue, and preach on the day of the Lord to the down-trodden, to the oppressed. But you will be robbed unless you have someone to guard you. ’ ‘ I am accustomed to being robbed,’ said Melissa indifferently. ‘ What does it matter whether Christians or heathens do it?’ ‘ Ah, yes,’ said Mr Hagopian, ‘ it is all the wickedness of those backsheesh hunting Turks. You must have someone to take of you much care. Yon are so precious. Such a cosoum— such a lamb.’ Melissa waxed imoatient. ‘Don’t you know Canadian girls well enough, Mr Hagopian, to be aware that, however sheepish, they can take care of themselves?' He bowed with Oriental grace. ‘ Ah—h, but beautiful Mees,’ he said, ‘it is not for the flower to make to be in the wayside. Oh, no ; it is for the nasty, evil-smelly weed that makes the aroma unpleasant, and no one minds. It is for the weeds to make smells. But oh, it is for the

nightingale to make song—the flower in the garden to bloom—the song to come to one, two, three persons. Yon are the Hower, hut you not make to yourself one garden ; and all the weeds come round to smell and be Howers. Ah, no. You want to make ’edge round you.’ ‘ Oriental metaphor is a little confusing, Mr Hagopian. I don’t quite follow yon.’ ‘ Yon want to make ’edge round you—cedar rails ; and then the weeds only overlook, and say to himself: “We cannot into the garden get; we are smelly weeds ; that is the rose.” ’ • Oh, I see. You think I want looking after.’ • Yes, beautiful Mees. Someone to look after to you—to make, to love you. To make comfort to your liver.' Melissa turned the conversation. Her liver did not require comforting. In fact, it worked admirably. ‘By the way, Mr Hagopian, I expect Mr Miller here presently. Let us get through our business before he comes.’

Mr Hagopian frowned. He did not love Jack. It was well for Jack that he wasn’t Milette’s goat. Oh, if he only lived in Armenia, even in the society of so humble a Christian as Mr Hagopian. We learn from Xenophon that in Armenia the honey has a strong poison concealed amid its sweets. This poison is attributed to a variety of rhododendrons which grows there in wild profusion. The coffee, too, of that district sometimes occasions the most melancholy accidents—especially if it be made by an enemy. Mr Hagopian thought regretfully of the incidental drawbacks to Christianity—drawbacks which involved the renunciation of such expeditious methods of removing a foe to another sphere of usefulness. But Jack didn’t take coffee, and Mr Hagopian was a Christian—or said that he was. ‘ Have you the authorisation of the American Board of Missions for me to proceed to Sivas?’ asked Melissa. ‘ The authorisation ?’ He felt in his pocket. * Oh, yes, I have him at the hotel, but it is all right.’ • I should like to see it,’ drily remarked Melissa. • I will fetch him presently,’ said Mr Hagopian, ruefully fumbling again for the non existent document. • And when do yon start?’ queried Melissa. ‘ When you make to get ready,’ said Mr Hagopian. He seemed in a hurry. • You actually propose that we should travel together ?’ enquired Melissa with assumed indiflerence. • Yes. Why not, beautiful Mees?’ • Well, it isn’t usual, you know,’ and Melissa played with her fan. ‘Do you see Mr Miller coming ?’ Mr Hagopian looked through the blinds. ‘ No,’ he said, shortly. *He is away at the Claversons. He makes to walk to see Mees Cecilia. The fat Mees Cecilia. Oh, so ploomp, so fat as never was !’ ■ You estimate beauty by weight, then ?’ ‘Oh, yes. In Circassia it is on milk the girls are made fat. But you will make fat to yourself. Oh, yes, when you once get to Sivas you will make fat to yourself. You will sit on the tops of the house all day, and do nothing but swell, oh, so round —make nothing but fat.’ He spread out his hands as if to signify how fat Melissa would get. ‘ And you will preach on Sundays. Here it is not good at all. It is not good. You make to rush about, to hurry, to what you call “Hy round.” Yon cannot get fat. You ices eat, you cold water drink, you like not rice and milk. Ah —h, in Armenia people do not make to run about, to dance. They sit on the ground, on the house-top ; they smoke, they eat rahat lakoum. And they are so beautiful—so fat as never was.’ ‘ Thank you, but I don’t want to be “so fat as never was,” Mr Hagopian.’ • Ah—h, but the Mees Cecilia,’ said Mr Hagopian, regretfully, ‘ she is so ploomp. Mr Jack can never to get his arm round her, she is so ploomp.’ He watched Melissa narrowly. ‘ Very possibly,’ said Melissa, still fanning herself. She had always disliked that horrid Claverson girl. ‘ So ploomp !’ repeated Hagopian. , • I don’t very well see how we can travel together, Melissa continued. • Isn’t there any way out of it?’ • Yes,’ said Mr Hagopian. * I have wait to tell yon the one way out. By yourself you will be, oh ! so helpless ; you will not stand. With one big tree to lean against, to make you strength, you will be known as the great hanoum, the hanoum who is rich, rich, rich I but who leaves all for the poor Annenian.’ • Are yon the poor Armenian to whom I am to leave everything ?’

‘Yes, beautiful Mees, lam the poor Armenian. Without yon, I am as the bull-bull, the bull bull who pines for his mate. Marry me, and 1 will sing—oh. all day longsing like the little frogs in the marsh. Ami I will look after your money. Oh, yes ; I will look after your money. Oh, these damn wicked Armen I mean, these poor brethren will wheedle out of you all your money, unless I am there to ' ‘Help them ?' asked Melissa. ‘Thank you. I needn't go all the way to Armenia to be swindled. It occurred to me that it might be as well to make some enquiries about you before I trusted myself to your hands. I did so — through Pinkerton’s Detective Agency. ft would seem that the American Mission people don’t know yon. They rather imagine you to be the servant of one of their missionaries who declined to return to Armenia.’

The Armenian became livid. To use his own picturesque phraseology, he turned as green ‘ as never was.’ ‘ Don’t deny it,’ruthlessly continued Melissa. ‘Hare you any money?’ ‘No,’ said the Armenian ruefully, as he displayed his empty pockets. ‘ No, beautiful Mees, I have not any money ; not one medjidieh. The landlord makes say to me what he calls a friendly game at the poker—the card poker, not the stove poker. But lie make the cards up his sleeve and down his boots all the time. When someone spiks to me I turn away, and the landlord makes to jump out the cards. Oh—h, they are wicked people these Canadians. And the others say, “ Beautiful ; bully for you, the brave man who play poker like Canadians as if born.” And I play, and play, and play. But the poker is too much. All my money — all the money for my poor brethren, for the schools at Kharpout, for the old, the starving—make to itself to go down the landlord’s boots—his damn boot. I cry, I rave, I swear — oh, I swear just a little—l tear my hair ; but he all the luck has and the cards. Never the accursed poker to me comes. Never. Oh—h, I am played out.’ ‘Then it wasn’t your own money?’ ‘ No, it was not my own money, beautiful Mees. It was for the heathen, for the poor ; and it has make itself to the landlord. All gone. Gone like the narghileh smoke ; gone like the dream ; gone like the pilaff. And when I beg for it back they laugh—oh yes, they laugh, and say—oh, I will not make to my lips what they say. It is not proper for you beautiful Mees. It is what you call ‘ skin game.’ They have skin me—me, the poor, helpless stranger. I have not of my skin left; and the landlord he has take to himself my best trousers. The brigand 1 May he burn in Eblis. ’ Melissa cut short the trembling, cringing wretch. ‘ I suppose you want me to help you away from here ?’ Mr Hagopian’s expression was signilicant. ‘ Such wicked peoples I have seen never,’ he said withexpression ; ‘never. I would like to make them all roast in Eblis, and stuff them with red hot stones in their insides, Such wicked peoples, to skin the poor stranger—the missionary. I am played out, and the landlord will make to turn me out.’ ‘Do you see Mr Miller coming ?’ asked Melissa. ‘ Yes ; down the road.’ ‘ Very well. I’ll give yon a thousand dollars to agree to everything I say to him. If you fail me, you will spend the night in gaol with good Mr Cameron, who will try to convert you.’ ‘ No, I have converted enough been,’ he said. ‘ I am too good for this wicked peoples.’ Then lie put his hand on his head with humility. ‘ For one thousand dollars,’ he continued, ‘ for one thousand dollars I would of my own grandmother make pilaff and—and eat her. My own grandmother.’

‘ You needn't do that,’ said Melissa, as Jack entered the room. ‘ Good-day, Mr Miller ; Mr Hagopian has prepared a little surprise for you.’ ‘ Indeed,’said Jaek grimly. ‘Perhaps I shall have one for him before he is much older. Can I see you alone ?’ • I have no secret* from Mr Hagopian.’ ‘ The beautiful Mees has no secrets from me,’ said Hagopian. ‘ But you may have from her,’ retoited Jack, declining to sit down. ‘ Melissa, I must speak to you.' ‘ Tell him that we have agreed to cast in our lots together, Johannes,’said Melissa to Ilagopian. ‘ You will betheliist to congratulate us, Mr Miller.’ Jack gave one searching glance at them both. They certainly did not look happy, especially the Armenian. His voice was very stern, as he moved towards Melissa. ‘ls your happiness bound up in this—this man he said. ‘ Yes,' faltered Melissa.

Jack tore up a piece of paper which he held in his hand. ‘ Then he’s safe as far as I'm concerned. I’d intended to enlighten you as to his antecedents, but I know you well enough to be aware that if you once love you will love to the end, and I spare him for your sake.’ Mr Hagopian thought Jack a bigger fool than ever. ‘Ah! you have compassion,'he said. ‘You will not see the heathen starve. You have liras. You will find me back my moneys and my trousers the landlord has made to steal. All my moneys !’ ‘That will do, Johannes,’ said Melissa. ‘l'm rather tired of it. You will not play in the future—if I can help it.’ ‘ Ah, no,’ he said with greasy idolatry. ‘ I will before you kneel all the time.’ Melissa felt inclined to box his ears. Jack look murderous. Melissa must be mad to throw herself away on this oily rntlian. It was monstrous, incredible ! His fingers itched to clutch the Armenian's throat and strangle him. The slimy villain ! ‘ Kindly go down to the hotel for that paper, Mr Hagopian,’ said Melissa. ■ ‘I will go,’ said Hagonian, ‘I will go, beautiful Mees; but oh I that landlord. He will make to kick me again — kick like one damn wicked mule.’ And he faded away to his doom. ‘ Now,’ said Melissa, turning to Jack, ‘ before we part for the last time, can you explain your outrageous insult of last night ?’ Jack looked her steadily in the face. Was the girl a fiend? ‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘l’ve no explanation to offer. I kissed you because I loved you. I couldn't make you feel that I loved yon until my soul spoke through my lips, and so I kissed you. No power in heaven or eartii can take that away from me. If I were starving, shipwrecked, tortured, crushed, maimed, dying. I’d remember that in my last moments. I was the first ! first ! first ! first !’ ‘ Yes, J—Jack, you were the first.’ ‘ Melissa, d’you know what you’re doing ?’ ‘ Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘ Would you—would you ?’ She hesitated. ‘ Would I what ?' She went up to him, laid a slim, white hand on his shoulder, and gazed tenderly into his manly honest eyes. ‘ Like to do that again ?’ she asked. ‘ What you —oh ! "you know. L —last night. ’ He stared. • But Hagopian ?’ ‘Jack, dear, that’s my wickedness. Dear, dear Jack, I’m dreadfully wicked. I wanted to test you, to see how big and brave and strong you are, though you did shake

your fist at me. I saw you, Jack. I was at the window all the time. You drew me there. I wanted to come out to you. I love you, Jack, I love you.’ Jack turned white. ‘Melissa—- ‘ Yes, 1 do. Jack. Most men would have given way to spite anil anger, and have denounced that rascal. You thought that 1 loved him (she shuddered) and so held your peace. Jack, you’re a hero. 1 didn’t dream you were so noble. I ought to have known. Would you have let me go away with that man ?’ ‘ 1 was going too,’ said Jack, simply. ‘lf he hat objected, we should have fought it out.' I’d have killed hiii:.’ Melissa nestled up to him with the air of one who is utterly content. ‘My brave Jack. That—that kiss told me the truth, Jack. My whole soul went out to you. Have I made you so miserable, my poor boy ? My p OO r, poor boy ! Have I,’lack? Oh, I’m so sorry. So ashamed, Jack. The old days have come back. The old days. 1 love you. Jack, my dear, my knight, my king, my hero among men. Kiss me again, Jack. 1 shall ieel worthier of you.’ For answer, he bent down and kissed her lips. ‘ Dearest, you will not be a prospective pilgrim much longer. You’ll come to me soon ?’ Her upturned eyes fell beneath his gaz.e. ‘ Y—es, Jaek. Soon.’ They wandered away into the primeval solitude of the bush, through the green glades, through the . dense files, to a little clearing, and looked up at the far away blue sky. Melissa gave a sigh of content. ‘lt’s nearer now, Jack. Nearer now. We will go back t> the old days.’ ‘ They're gone for ever, Meliisi.’ She shook her wilful little head. ‘No, Jack. We’re still children, only bigger, and our toys are —hearts ! It they break they—' ‘ Break together,’' he said. And they wandered on into the old days.