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never definitely thought of it before, but she knew now that it was the thing she wanted most. Did he want it too? Yes, she felt he did—how strange, and—beautiful! . . . Then a new thought struck, like a winged arrow. Ah, yes, what a baby she was!

“Tony,” she said, “are you sure this isn’t another way of making me keep Trent Stoke?”

His eyes were very hard. “I think that is rather an insult,” he said deliberately.

Pamela was nervous, but—it did seem likely.

“You risked your life so that I should go back,” she said. “You went through an awful desert—it must have been terribly dangerous. Naturally I can’t help thinking———”

“It seems a lot to you, to risk one’s life, does it?” Tony said. “It was nothing but a very interesting gamble—I enjoyed it. But marriage—that’s very different. I’ve never wanted to be married. I’ve always thought a wife would bore me and tire me. To die—that’s very simple; it’s over; but to saddle myself with a wife for always—no! I wouldn’t do that out of chivalry.”

It was bald truth that he spoke, and as he uttered it he felt it growing truer. He certainly wanted no one but Pamela, and it was not for the sake of bringing her back to Trent Stoke. But how he had arrived at that point he did not know; he looked back over a welter of troubled sea at his abandoned resolution, and then turned his back on it for good. He had asked her to marry him—well. And now it remained to be seen whether she would have anything to do with him.

Perhaps his blunt arguments convinced her where the most tender protestations might have failed. For a moment or two longer she gazed at him, uncertain, not of herself, but of him. Then, though his grave face had not relaxed, she stretched out her hands to him, smiling, and he took