[All Rights Reserved.] A Modern St. Elizabeth

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXX, Issue XXV, 20 June 1903, Page 1703

[All Rights Reserved.] A Modern St. Elizabeth

By

NETTA SYRETT.

CHAPTER XXI. Thus it happened that the following day Power received a parcel directed in Elizabeth's handwriting; He opened it rather wonderingly and found it contained a shabby little leather book, showing signs of great wear and tear. A note dropped from between its leaves as he opened it. He broke the seal and read — “Dear Mr Power, —

“Will it bore you to read the journal I have kept at intervals since I was ten years old? This seems a strange request, but we misunderstood one another two or three years ago, and though perhaps it is foolish, 1 should like you at least to understand, and perhaps make excuses for me. “Yours very sincerely, “E.G.” Power left the picture at which he was working, and with the little book in his hand, crossed the room to the fire. He drew up a chair and opened the volume at the first page, which was covered with writing in a round, childish hand.

Tuesday, July.—l came to live with Aunt Carrie and Aunt Mary two years ago. I don’t like them, they are very ugly. Friday.—l am very unhappy. They have sent me to sit in my' bedroom because they said 1 was rude. I hope I was, for they said horrid things about mamma. I was acting with my dolls, and they came and stopped me, and said an aetress was a wicked woman, who would go to hell. How dare they say that, w’hen they know mamma was an actress?

Never mind! I shan’t always be a little girl, and when I’m grown up 1 shall act, too, and then A f it’s true that actresses go to hell, I shall meet her again.

Saturday, August. —It is a long time since I wrote anything in this book, hut 1 hate Aunt Carrie and Aunt Mary more than ever, and I have thought of a way to practice being an actress. I ean act every day. I can pretend different things to different people. I have begun already to Aunt Carrie and Aunt Mary. I pretend I’m getting quite stupid. J practised how 1 would look before the glass, and it’s just like that silly little idiot girl who fives at the cottage down the lane. At school lam quite different, except to Miss Brown, who is a horrid thing. And then the nice teachers come up to Aunt Carrie and say how bright I am, and then she’s awfully an gry, and says I am almost an idiot, and it’s such fun. . .

Power turned page after page, each bearing its sad revelation of a miserable childhood forced to discover some means of escape from the burden of reality.

He saw how the little girl who had determined to “practise acting’’ had grown to womanhood with an ever increasing consciousness of her powers, and a sense of humour which found vent only in the dangerous diversion which she had invented. He saw how she had learnt to amuse herself thus, until acting had become second nature to her; an exquisite, secret pleasure which she had wrested from unpropitious circumstances.

He followed her outwardly uneventful life, step by step, down to the summer she had spent at Mulberry Row, with a curious contraction of the heart, yet with a smile he read her flippant comment upon himsdlf at their first meeting.

The journal ended with the words—“Mr Power has asked me to marry him ”

Christopher rose to his feet with a long sigh, as of a man awakening. He felt unreasonably happy. Nothing was

altered, yet he was filled with exultation. He understood Elizabeth. She had wished him to understand her.

He was possessed with the thought oi her. Giving himself no time for reflection, he left his studio, book in hand and in half an hour he was standing in the entrance hall of Forest Mansions.

“Mrs Golightly, sir? Gone, sir! Nun 1 ber four is closed,” announced the hail porter, as Power was about to enter the lift.

He turned and looked at the man in credulously. “What do you say? Gone! Whers? I mean when did Mrs Golightly go?” “This morning, sir. They are going abroad, I think," said the man, “at least that’s what Mrs Golightlv’s maid told me.”

“Ah, yes! I daresay,” murn ur,d Power rather incoherently as he went slowly down the steps. “So she has settled it for both of us,” he thought bitterly. “Well!” He drew a long breath. “Now what shall I do? Stay here and work is the obvious conclusion, excipt that—--1 can’t.”

A sudden thought struck him like an icy shaft. What if her sudden departure meant news of her husband? Most probably she had gone to join hi.n. His lips whitened. Though he had assured him self that the man would return, that ha dare not hope Betty was free, the possibility that the thing had come to pass was unbearable. He was walking through a quiet square at the moment, and he sank down wearily on one of the benches to think. He must find out. But how? Mrs Royston would know. But how could he take a journey of two hundred miles to ask her a question which she would have the right to < onsider an inexplicable impertinence? The Fairfaxes who lived in the next village! Of course he could go and stay with them, and then walk over to call on Mrs Royston. If she knew, she would be far too excited about it, to keep the matter to herself.... Yes, that w< uld do!

He got up, and went to the nearest telegraph office, despatched a somewhat lengthy telegram, and then walked home in a state of feverish suspense about the reply. It arrived, after what seemed an endless time of waiting, and next’ morning he was whirling westwards, and chafing at the thought that he could not possibly walk over to Cliffside till the next day, at the earliest. The next afternoon was fine and warm, one of those spring - like days, whicn sometimes come before their time, in the depth of winter. The air was sweet and balmy, and filled with that subtle violet seent which steals into the air like a breath from a fairy region of perpetual flowers. Power had ehosen the path along the edge of the cliff towards the Roystons’ house. It was a walk of five or six miles perhaps, with worded undulating country on one hand, and on the other, sheer down below Ihe limestone cliffs, the vast expanse oi sea. The beauty of the scene afflicted him with haunting sadness. From the path which wound along high up on the cliffs he eould see lonely headlands with worn and shattered grey rocks at their base, ’■mind which the little waves swirled and eddied ceaselessly with a monotonous splash. The sun had been shining faintly ■ill day through a luminous fleece of so.'t grey clouds, and though the afternoo i was closing in, a pearly light still lingered over the calm sea. In sheltered places on the grass-covered cliffs, there were patches of golden gorse. Every now and then a bird twittered, and then suddenly stopped abruptly as though frightened at the sound its own voice made in the silence.

He had come to a point of the cliffs which he well remembered. He had walked there two summers ago. It was

the first time he had been alone with Elizabeth since his second meeting with ner. The others had strolled on. and he had stood just here with her, and they had stopped to look at the purple of the heather against the blue sea. bae had been in a gentle mood that evening, and he had told her, what he had never told to anyone before or since, something of what his mother’s death had meant to him. She had listened sympathisingly, and had spoken tenderly ana reverently of her. It was then that be knew his love for the girl had not died —had never died. He realised that whatever she did, or left undone, she could never be dethroned.

As he stood now on the same spot, the utter loneliness of his life came before him with a dreary numbing sense of hopelessness. He was a man who had made few friends; he had no near relations—fortunately as he had sometimes said, but now—well it was rather dreary to be without kith or kin. He thought of his mother’s pathetic yearning grief over that shattering of his hopes, and the end of her romance, and as he thought an overwhelming sense of the uselessness, the futility of every endeavour, of every ambition, of every aspiration assailed him.

“Ah, well!” he exclaimed presently with a sigh. “We must pull ourselves together, and go on, I suppose, since we must live, though just at present—moi, je ne vois pas la neeessite!”

He walked on a few paces, and the i a sudden impulse seized him to retrace his steps. It was just at this point he had pointed out to Elizabeth a curious formation in the rocks down below, and the fancy struck him to see the place again. Yes, there it was, a long ridge of smooth roek like a bench more than half way down the cliff; above it, and below it, sheer naked rocks, their base washed by the sea. He looked and started. Surely something lay there? Someone was crouching against the rock wall half hidden by a projecting boulder. Power knelt down on the short turf, and leant further over the edge of the cliff. Then he saw it was a woman half-sitting, half lying on the ridge; her back towards him. He shouted, and a white upturned face flashed round, and met his gaze. It was Betty!

For one awful moment his heart stopped beating. Then it began to pulse in long slow throbs, which seemed to be draining his strength away. With a great effort he rose to his feet, and all at once regained calmness and presence of mind.

“Don’t be frightened!” he called to her. “I am coming to you!” But how? The cliff shelved straight and bare immediately below the spot on which he was standing, with never a ledge that would hold so much as a tuft of grass or a root of sea pinks. His glance travelled hastily from right to loft. There, on the right, perhaps he might venture, though it would be a perilous climb even so. Before attempting it he shaded his eyes with his hands and looked eagerly in every direction. His sight was keen, and though he could see far away, not a soul was visible. Then, quick as lightning, he swung himself over the cliff’s edge, clinging with both hands to roots of bushes, tufts of wiry heather and stiff bracken, finding a foothold when he could, scrambling and

slipping when there was nothing to stay his feet. He could not think, but be found himself noticing minutely every tuft of harsh prickly grass, every tiny yellow flower, even the lumps of dry earth and pebbles as they rolled down after him. The distance seemed unending; he dare not look below for fear of becoming giddy but now the splash of the sea seemed louder. A little further, and his feet touched a slab of rock at the base of the cliff. Starting up, he saw Betty just above him, a little to his left; watching with dry wide-opened eyes and drawn set face. In a moment he was at her side.

“How long have you been here?” he asked breathlessly. “I don't know. It seems like years,” she answered. She spoke in a faint whisper.

“Come!” he cried, as she did not move. “We have no time to lose. We must try the cliff —where I earne down. It will be rather difficult,” his heart sank as he thought of the steep slope—with the hungry sea below, but it was their only chance. “I will help you, and we shall manage,” he added encouragingly.

“I can’t!” she returned. “I should have tried it long ago —by myself, but I have hurt my foot. I think the ankle is broken.” She had taken off her boot, and as she moved her dress to let him see, he noticed the foot was terribly swollen.

Christopher groaned. To attempt to take her up the precipitous cliu was impossible. He looked wildly round. Before them stretched the pitiless sea, calm and beautiful, its quiet unbroken, but rising every moment, steadily, inch by inch. Above towered the straight bare rocks, jutting on either hand far out into the sea. On either headland, the path just showed like a wmte ribbon, before it dipped down again out of sight. There was not a sound except the gurgle and splash of the waves almost at their feet. There was no escape. In a quarter of an hour the sea would be washing over their ledge of rock, so that even if anyone should pass over either hill and see them, before ropes could be fetched, they would b? beyond help. Christopher’s eyes met the upturned gaze of the girl at his feet. In them she read his unspoken acknowledgment that escape was impossible. In hers, he read the same thought, but no fear, only almost terrible joy. “You see it is no use,” she said softly. Christopher sank down bes.de her. “How did you come uere!” he asked, and then be could have laughed at the futility of the question, when they had only ten minutes to live! “I was walking along ihe shore from Cliffside, the rocks were all uncovered at low tide, and I slipped on some seaweed, and had to stay here and watch the sea come up,” she answered simply. Christopher shuddered. Before he eould speak her face had changed. “What am I doing?” she cried breathlessly. “You can get up. You can get away! Go! Go!” she tried to push him from her with both hands.

Christopher seized them both, and smiled as he looked into her eyes.

“Listen,” he said, in a low rapid voice. “A moment ago, up there. I was moaning that it was cowardly to make an end of it. Now that difficulty is removed. lam going to die —with you.”

Betty gazed at him a moment. What she read in his face, allowed her that entreaties were useless. She sighed gently like a happy, contented child.

Power threw both arms round her, and held her elose; and she lay still while he bent over her.

“Betty,” he whispered hoarsely, “have vou heard from your husband?”

“No,” she answered quietly, "but I shall—l mean I should.” Then she was silent a moment.

Presently she raised her head quickly, and looked about ber. The sea had the soft, milky changeful colour of opals; it stretched away into tender cloudinct i and every moment it crept stealthily.

softly nearer. It stirred the weed that fringed the rocky ledge now, floating it out so that its golden colour was visible.

“Are you sure we cannot be saved?” she asked, turning to Power. “My poor child! my darling—l don’t think there is any chance for us,” he

“Then say it!” she cried. “I have seen it already in your face, but 1 want to hear you say it!” “I love you, Betty! I have always loved you!” he whispered.

She turned her face towards him. and their lips met. “This is the best thing that could happen to us,” she said, in a low trembling voice—“ For me at least. 1 was tired of my life too, Christopher. Now 1 need not struggle or think any more But you were such a long time coming to me!” she added in a tired child’s voice.

“Why did you think I should come?” he asked. She had not shown any surprise at seeing him, he remembered. “Oh, T knew you must come. I could not have died, all alone,” she answered, simply.

The water was washing over her feet now, scattering bright drops playfully over her dark serge dress. Power tried to draw her closer to the wall, but she gave a pitiful little moan of pain as he moved her, and he could only clasp her tighter with a smothered groan.

She had hidden her face on his shoulder. “I don’t wan’t to see it coining,” she said. “Don’t —don’t let me go when we are swept away,” she whispered. “Will it—do you think it will be very cold?” Power kissed her soft hair in an agony of pity for the terror he knew

she would feel when the cruel water elpsed over her. He tried to tell her that he should swim, and hold her up—that she was to put a hand on his shoulder, and they might keep afloat till-

Suddenly, shrilly, piercing the silence, came the sound of a boy’s voice whistling—and surely—yes! the dip and splash of oars. Power sprang to >„s feet and shouted till the cliffs rang again. A large wave broke on the ledge, flinging its spray into his face, and drenching Betty as she leaned against the rock. He caught her up in his anus and held her out of reach for the moment. while again he shouted desperately, despairingly.

A boat shot round the corner of the dark jutting headland. A boy was rowing it, and as he caught sight of Power standing with his back braced against the rock wall, he gave an answering shout, and made the little craft fly over tile water. Not a moment too soon, for the waves, as though fearing to be balked of the prey they had watched so long, seemed to grow more fiercely impatient, and strove, by leaping round them, to draw the girl away from his close grasp. “Steady, sir! I’ll take her. You ’old on yourself a bit.” said the boy, standing up in the boat, which was now alongside. “\Vhv, it's the Laidy!” he exclaimed, taking Betty tenderly out of Power’s arms. “Is she dead, sir?” he asked, in an awed tone as he saw her white face.

“God forbid!” cried Power, springing into the boat, and kneeling down beside her. “No! she has fainted Sne has hurt her foot; I expect it was the pain when I had to move her.”

“Yon know her, then? Why. you are one of her boys!” he said, looking at the lad closely.

“Yes, sir. Jeffreys, him that was ill, you know. The laidy,” looking at Betty. “got me a place at Mr Royston's, she thought the air would set me up again. The laidy is staying at Mrs Royston’s. I weren’t a minute too soon, were 1, sir’’' he added, looking anxiously at the white, still face. ‘'Will she pull round, sir?” he asked. “I shouldn’t like no ’arm to ’appen to ’er,” he added, tremulously. “She’s a real good ’un, she is.” “You have saved her life, my boy.’ answered Power, huskily. He had taken off his coaC, and was placing it gently under Betty 's head as he spoke. “And yourn, too, sir, I reckon.” “I should have thanked you more if ” began Power, and then stopped abruptly, leaving the sentence unfinished. CHAPTER XXII. Ten months previously, while Betty was tasting the anguish of slow awakening irom the state of stupor in which she had consented coldly and indifferently to her own bondage, her husband was speed ing westward. He could not have told afterwaids how the journey had passed. He thought only of long, long days of fierce sunshine of sparkling sea, and of nights that seemed like years, when he paced the deck u - der the burning stars and listened to the everlasting, maddening wash of the waves against the ship’s side, and the calm silence of the night had seemed to mock his unrest. Then when he landed, there were

months of ceaseless activity that were easier to bear. He attacked his work with a kind of fierce delight, and as one obstacle after another was overcome, smoothed out, put straight, his heart leapt with exultation.

By waiting so long for Elizabeth’s answer he had been playing a desperate game, and he knew it. A few hours after he had offered her a month in which to decide, news from America reached him which turned him sick with anxiety. It was nothing short of ruin that he feared, if the threatened danger were not speedily averted. To marry Elizabeth, only for her to discover that he possessed nothing but the money which she had for months imagined hers! That would be an admirable foundation for the love which he hoped would follow. Enough! He must save what was already his. if only to defend himself from this reproach. And yet he waited, knowing the risk of every hour’s delay. He had given Elizabeth a month in which to consider her answer. That her reply was a foregone conclusion mattered nothing. He would not risk giving her an extra reason for hating him by hurrying her decision. So he set his teeth and waited, not only for Elizabeth’s answer, but fo * the week in Paris, which, mad as he knew himself to be. he refused to renounce. To atone for this delay he attacked his work with an energy and fierceness which seemed superhuman. For three months he scarcely ate or slept. Pay after day found him in the saddle riding from mine to mine, till he had visit-d in person nearly all his property. Tlvre vet remained one mine of his. far in the interior of the country, and this he had also determined to see. He started on the

long ride feeling jaded and worn, with some idea that the journey, onee accomplished, he would pull up and take a rest. It- would save time perhaps in the end, after all. As the day wore on his languid feeling increased in spite of all his efforts to throw off his weariness.

“I’m not ill, 1 can’t afford the luxury,” he murmured doggedly, trying to see through a wavering mist which seemed to have arisen, making the cactus plants, with which the wide silent plain was studded, appear like live misshapen figures which leered and pointed skinny fingers towards him. The long distant chain of snow mountains, too, would not keep in their places; they kept advancing and retreating, sometimes rushing towards him over the wide plain—sometimes receding to the dim horizon. He covered a few more miles, conscious that every now and then the reins fell from his hand and that it was only with an effort he picked them up, and urged on his stumbling horse. Presently he reeled in the saddle. Ills last conscious effort was to stagger to his feet, and make his way as well as he could, through a blinding mist, towards a hut at some little distance, which was evidently the deserted shelter of a miner.

Then the blackness closed over him, and he sank into blank unconsciousness.

From the stupor into which he hat fallen he awakened some hours later to find himself in darkness. Opposite where he lay, was the framework of a narrow window, from which the glass, if it had ever been there, had long since disappeared. Through this slit in the wooden wall he eould see a few yellow stars set in the deep night sky. There was utter silence, and Golightly knew that he was dying. Dying before his work was done, alone, forsaken, in a strange land, in the midst of this great cruel silence.

The horror of it petrified him. He lay rigid, his eyes fixed on the palpitating stars, conscious that the deathbringing fever was working in his blood, that there was no eseape, that he must die “like a rat in a hole,” as he repeated to himself over and over again with dull persistence. His brain was busy in ceaselessly winding and unwinding tangled sk'eins of thought.

As the fever gained strength hour by hour, vivid pictures rose before his eyes, and he lived over again his life of the two previous years, since first he saw the woman who had changed heaven and earth for him. He was in a sunny English garden again, and down the narrow path between rows of shining lilies, came Elizabeth in her straight white gown, with her grave sweet eyes, and her shy smile, and her swift appealing glances.. The drawing-room at the Royston” house now, and Elizabeth in the beautiful rose-colour dress she wore in the evening, was laughimr gaily with Jack and Cissy, throwing an occasional mischievous backward glance to where he stood, his heart beating at the sight of her beauty, his mind acknowledging, nay rejoicing in the cleverness of her deception. Here was the woman for him, a woman brave enough to fight for herself, to work for herself, and to climb to a high place through her own audacity. But he would wait. He woull make sure of her. Such a woman would be hard to win, she would not willingly relinquish anything — certainly not her liberty. As yet she cared nothing for him—he could see that; she might continue to care nothing for him, up to the time when she could be indifferent with' impunity still. He had always the trump card in his hand. She should be forced to care —if not for him, at any rate for the wealth for which she hail schemed so cleverly.... and he still ha 7 one card to play. Now he was driving with Christopher Power to the little Welsh station, making careless allusions to Miss Trevor’s clever duplicity—letting fall half wards, and marking How they struck home, and how his silent companion was struggling between love and contempt for the woman they both desired. Now he had dismissed the subject lightly, and was talking in interested fashion over Power’s own prospects, carrying out his long premeditated plan, mentioning the appointment in Colombia, offering his help and influence to its acquirement, and smiling inwardly with rare enjoyment at Power’s efforts at gratitude for what he felt unwillingly compelled to accept.... ' Ah! There was Elizabeth again, standing in her pretty fire-lit drawing‘•tom. How ill she looked, in spite of

bright eyes and flushed cheeks! Now she lay back in the deep chair, crushed and broken, and he knew the victory wa.» his!....

Onee more he went through all his work ginee he landed. How it maddened him to have to follow again all his useless schemes, his fruitless arrangements, his endless plans, and his triumph, when he found that all went well, that he would lose nothing, that every successful day brought him nearer to Elizabeth ....

Elizabeth once more! She mocked him with teasing words, leaning over the balustrade half way up the staircase at Cliffside. Her cheeks were the colour of the faint pink rose at her waist—it dropped at his feet as she ran laughing upstairs.

Why she was by the sea now —standing on the rocks near the water’s edge. He could hear the splash and gurgle of the waves as they rose and eddied round the grey rocks. Who was with her—• taking her hand, bending over her—taking her hand? He raised his head! it was Power! Christopher Power!.... The dying man sprang up with a shriek that echoed weirdly in the silence, echoed and faded slowly in the distance.

“Fool! He had not thought of that. Why she would be free and he Would come back and marry her. Marry Elizabeth! That was to be the end of everything! After all his struggles, all that he had done and suffered —in the very hour of victory, he was dying here like a dog—and it was Power’s turn.

He turned his face to the wall and writhed at the thought, biting his lips till the blood came.

Fool! Why, when he had health and strength, had he not better disposed of the man than to send him merely a few thousand miles away, leaving him the chance of coming back any day—to ruin everything. Why, of course, he was somewhere in this very country! He should have hunted, him down and silenced him for ever! Now it was too late—too late!—Elizbeth would be glad; she would laugh, she had the prettiest laugh!—and he would, kiss her. . . . The hours went on as he lay there, tortured with thirst and with maddening jealousy, but growing gradually weaker till his moaning died away, ami he slipped onee more into merciful unconsciousness. CHAPTER XXIII. Power was at work in his studio one morning six months after Elizabeth’s departure with the Royston's. Through tire open window he saw the tree tops in the London Square, green against a sky of dazzling blue. Somewhere down the road a flower girl was calling. “Roses—penny a bunch. Lovely roses!” It was summer. He thought of Elizabeth strolling in the forest at Marienbad, where at the present moment she was staying with the Roystons.

He shut his eyes and pictured her as she would look in her cool muslin gown, a bunch of roses at her waist.

“Roses! Lovely roses. Penny a bunch,” chanted the calling voice, and Power sprang up impatiently and closed the window on the street side of the studio.

Onee more he turned to his easel and tried to work. Finally, he threw down his brushes and began to pace the. room with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and his head down bent.

Betty had been abroad six months, every moment of which he had spent in efforts ' to become so absorbed in his work that the thought of her might sometimes fade from his mind. In vain. As the months wore on his longing grew, and he might not even write to her. For the thousandth time he took out and re-read the letter he had received the day after their eseape from drowning. She was going away with Mab and the children. She begged him not to write. There was nothing else to be done, and it was only by obedience to her wishes that he could at least allow her to be at peace. Then there followed a line or two which Christopher knew by heart, though he read them again, and put the paper to his lips.

Crossing to the writing table he unlocked a drawer and took out the little, shabby, brown journal, which she had allowed him to keep. Poor little child

Betty! He knew her story now by heart, but he rend it once mure before he resumed his troubled pacr;.g of the mom. Above the mantelpiece t*.ere hung the portrait of his mother. Christopher {mused at length beneath it, and resting his elbows on the chimney ledge he looked long ut it. He had painted her in her grey gown. With delicate lace round the shoulders and at the wrists, and flimsy lace upon her white hair. lie had admirably succeeded in catching her expression of tender mockery, and as he looked into the dear blue eyes he could fancy they smiled, as they so often did. before the lips spoke. •’You are going to be ver\ happy. Kit,” they said. “I—l—like your little * . . Saint Elizabeth.’’

They were his mother’s last words, spoken with her dying breath, when the mists of death had mercifully blotted out all memory of her son’s shattered romance.

Power had thought of them many times, and always with a sense of thankfulness that she had forgotten. That at the last she had recovered her happiness in illusion. Now the words recurring to him seemed like bitter mock-

“I must end this," he thought with sudden determination. “This painting won’t do—at least not yet. 1 must go. (vet out of «town: try a life of action. Wear myself out in some way. She will be coining back soon, ami then things will be intolerable. I must think what to do.*’

With an impatient sigh he was turning back to his easel, when he hoard a knock. Frowning at the interruption, he opened the door, and found a shabby looking man on the threshold. “No models,” he was beginning, cutting short the usual enquiry, when a suppressed curiosity in the man’s face arrested his attention. He was staring at the brass plate on the side of the door. “Your name Christopher Power, sir?” •the fellow asked, as though invohitariily. “Yes. Why?” “Nothing, sir—nothing. -Leastways it’s a name that been worrying me a, good deal lately.” Power was conscious of some curiosity. “Come in,” he said. “Sit down,” as the man hesitated. . “Why should my name worry you?” His visitor drew a deep breath. He was a sturdy, well set up, young fellow, Power noticed, with a pleasant it somewhat unintelligent face, tanned as if by constant exposure to the. sun. “Only last time I ’eard it, sir, it was said by a dyin’ man. And it’s stuck in my mind like, seems as if 1 couldn’t forget it.” “It’s not a very common name, though I daresay there are plenty of Christopher Powers about. A dying man, you say?” “Yes, sir. It was some time ago •-» out in Colombia.” Christopher started. “Colombia? . « I was out there myself last year. . . There was a stupid report of my deaf li 1 believe in the papers. Perhaps this explains. Go on. tell me about it.”

“Well, it was like this,” said the young fellow, awkwardly. “Mines, I was working in then, and I’d been sent a day’s journey across the plains like, to another property. About ’arf way, I see a horse with a saddle on. browsing. I thought someone had been

thrown, but there was no sign of a blessed livin’ soul, and 1 couldn’t make it out till I ’appened to look in at the window of a little broken down shelter, which wasn’t far off, and there I see a man lyin’. I went in, and at first I thought he was dead, but when I’d forced a drop of water into his mouth, ’e opened his eyes, but 1 see ’e was dying. “So I knelt down alongside of ’im and says, ‘What’s your name?’” At this point the young man paused, and looked half fearfullv over his shoulder.

“Excuse mo, sir,” he wont on. apologetically, “it’s foolish like, but I can’t never get his face out of my mind. He —he ’eld on to my sleeve, and ’e kep’ lookin’ at me, and ’is eyes weren't like anything I ever saw-—and at last he whispers: ‘Write it down.’ I took out my pencil and a bit of paper, and ’e sez, ‘Christopher Power’ —he sez, then ’•) spelt it slowly twice over till I got it down right, and afterwards an address somewhere in Chelsea.

“When I got that right, ’e pulls 'iinself up on one arm, and says, ‘Swear to put that in the English papers, or I’ll leave you no rest day or night as long as you live.’ ” The man paused and wiped his forehead with the back of his ha ml. “I can't forget it, sir,” he murmured, apologetically. “Go on.’’ urged Power, in a low voice. “lor God’s sake, go on, man.” “There's no more. I swore, and ’e < ropped back unconscious, an’ a few hours after he died. 1 buried l.im just outside tbe hut. As soon as ever I got the chance 1 found out ’ow to ge 7he name put in the English paper-. I was scared out of my life that he’d ” "Look here!" cried Power, starting to his feet. “What was he like? For (io I s sake, describe him. Was he——” "Big and fair, with—’old on a minute, sir. 'I here was this 1 found on ’im.” He fumbled in his breast pocket, and drew out a ease, which he put into Powers hands, “tine of them portraits is im. sir. exactly like him too.” I’he little ease fell from Power’s shaking hands. it contained two photographs: one of Valentine Golightly, and one of Elizabeth his wife. Power reached Marienbad next duv, and in the late afternoon sunshine he walked up the quiet cobble-paved street leading to the Roystons' hotel. All the previous night, ami all that day, his mind had been occupied at least as much with the memory of a dying man as with the thought of Elizabeth.

Mhat had been his motive? First, of course, to prevent his wife from learning that she was free. To that end he had concealed his real name. Why had he taken the name of his rival? Was it to delay Elizabeth’s meeting with her old lover? Did he count the chances

that the meeting might thus never take place? Power could not determine, but lie found himself brooding with a deep and very real sense of pity, over the thought of tlie tortured man, who, after his fashion, had loved Elizabeth to the death. By the time he reached the hotel, however, there was one thought, and one thought only, in his mind. In another moment, he should see her, stand in the same room, take her hand, kiss her lips. He eould scarcely frame the necessary question to the waiter who met him in the hall. Chance had favoured him. The Roystons had gone out for the day, and Mrs Golightly was alone upstairs. She turned round slowly as he was admitted into her sitting-room. The colour was all gone from her face, as she rose and stood facing him. “Why have you come?” she whispered at last. “It is very cruel of you. You know 1 can only bear it if you stay away, if you never write, if you - ” Her voice broke, and she sank back in her chair trembling. “Betty!" he whispered, scarcely knowing how he reached her side. “Betty! I may eome. You will let me stay?” “What are you saying?” she asked, hoarsely. “Do you know what you are saying?” "1 mean that Valentine Golighth is dead,” whispered Power, taking her in his arms. "You are my wife. Elizabeth." (The End.i