They went on climbing steadily without exchanging another word; and

when they stood on the top she gazed a long time before her. The
low evening mist veiled the further limit of the reefs. Above the

enormous and melancholyconfusion, as of a fleet of wrecked
islands, the restless myriads of sea-birds rolled and unrolled dark

ribbons on the sky, gathered in clouds, soared and stooped like a
play of shadows, for they were too far for them to hear their

cries.
Renouard broke the silence in low tones.

"They'll be settling for the night presently." She made no sound.
Round them all was peace and declining sunshine. Near by, the

topmost pinnacle of Malata, resembling the top of a buried tower,
rose a rock, weather-worn, grey, weary of watching the monotonous

centuries of the Pacific. Renouard leaned his shoulders against
it. Felicia Moorsom faced him suddenly, her splendid black eyes

full on his face as though she had made up her mind at last to
destroy his wits once and for all. Dazzled, he lowered his eyelids

slowly.
"Mr. Renouard! There is something strange in all this. Tell me

where he is?"
He answered deliberately.

"On the other side of this rock. I buried him there myself."
She pressed her hands to her breast, struggled for her breath for a

moment, then: "Ohhh! . . . You buried him! . . . What sort of man
are you? . . . You dared not tell! . . . He is another of your

victims? . . . You dared not confess that evening. . . . You must
have killed him. What could he have done to you? . . . You

fastened on him some atrocious quarrel and . . ."
Her vengeful aspect, her poignant cries left him as unmoved as the

weary rock against which he leaned. He only raised his eyelids to
look at her and lowered them slowly. Nothing more. It silenced

her. And as if ashamed she made a gesture with her hand, putting
away from her that thought. He spoke, quietly ironic at first.

"Ha! the legendary Renouard of sensitive idiots - the ruthless
adventurer - the ogre with a future. That was a parrot cry, Miss

Moorsom. I don't think that the greatest fool of them all ever
dared hint such a stupid thing of me that I killed men for nothing.

No, I had noticed this man in a hotel. He had come from up country
I was told, and was doing nothing. I saw him sitting there lonely

in a corner like a sick crow, and I went over one evening to talk
to him. Just on impulse. He wasn't impressive. He was pitiful.

My worst enemy could have told you he wasn't good enough to be one
of Renouard's victims. It didn't take me long to judge that he was

drugging himself. Not drinking. Drugs."
"Ah! It's now that you are trying to murder him," she cried.

"Really. Always the Renouard of shopkeepers' legend. Listen! I
would never have been jealous of him. And yet I am jealous of the

air you breathe, of the soil you tread on, of the world that sees
you - moving free - not mine. But never mind. I rather liked him.

For a certain reason I proposed he should come to be my assistant
here. He said he believed this would save him. It did not save

him from death. It came to him as it were from nothing - just a
fall. A mere slip and tumble of ten feet into a ravine. But it

seems he had been hurt before up-country - by a horse. He ailed
and ailed. No, he was not a steel-tipped man. And his poor soul

seemed to have been damaged too. It gave way very soon."
"This is tragic!" Felicia Moorsom whispered with feeling.

Renouard's lips twitched, but his level voice continued
mercilessly.

"That's the story. He rallied a little one night and said he
wanted to tell me something. I, being a gentleman, he said, he

could confide in me. I told him that he was mistaken. That there
was a good deal of a plebeian in me, that he couldn't know. He

seemed disappointed. He muttered something about his innocence and
something that sounded like a curse on some woman, then turned to

the wall and - just grew cold."
"On a woman," cried Miss Moorsom indignantly. "What woman?"

"I wonder!" said Renouard, raising his eyes and noting the crimson
of her ear-lobes against the live whiteness of her complexion, the

sombre, as if secret, night-splendour of her eyes under the
writhing flames of her hair. "Some woman who wouldn't believe in

that poor innocence of his. . . Yes. You probably. And now you
will not believe in me - not even in me who must in truth be what I

am - even to death. No! You won't. And yet, Felicia, a woman
like you and a man like me do not often come together on this

earth."
The flame of her glorious head scorched his face. He flung his hat

far away, and his suddenly lowered eyelids brought out startlingly
his resemblance to antiquebronze, the profile of Pallas, still,

austere, bowed a little in the shadow of the rock. "Oh! If you
could only understand the truth that is in me!" he added.

She waited, as if too astounded to speak, till he looked up again,
and then with unnatural force as if defending herself from some

unspoken aspersion, "It's I who stand for truth here! Believe in
you! In you, who by a heartless falsehood - and nothing else,

nothing else, do you hear? - have brought me here, deceived,
cheated, as in some abominable farce!" She sat down on a boulder,

rested her chin in her hands, in the pose of simple grief -
mourning for herself.

"It only wanted this. Why! Oh! Why is it that ugliness,
ridicule, and baseness must fall across my path."

On that height, alone with the sky, they spoke to each other as if
the earth had fallen away from under their feet.

"Are you grieving for your dignity? He was a mediocre soul and
could have given you but an unworthyexistence."

She did not even smile at those words, but, superb, as if lifting a
corner of the veil, she turned on him slowly.

"And do you imagine I would have devoted myself to him for such a
purpose! Don't you know that reparation was due to him from me? A

sacred debt - a fine duty. To redeem him would not have been in my
power - I know it. But he was blameless, and it was for me to come

forward. Don't you see that in the eyes of the world nothing could
have rehabilitated him so completely as his marriage with me? No

word of evil could be whispered of him after I had given him my
hand. As to giving myself up to anything less than the shaping of

a man's destiny - if I thought I could do it I would abhor myself.
. . ." She spoke with authority in her deep fascinating,

unemotional voice. Renouard meditated, gloomy, as if over some
sinister riddle of a beautiful sphinx met on the wild road of his

life.
"Yes. Your father was right. You are one of these aristocrats . .

."
She drew herself up haughtily.

"What do you say? My father! . . . I an aristocrat."
"Oh! I don't mean that you are like the men and women of the time

of armours, castles, and great deeds. Oh, no! They stood on the
naked soil, had traditions to be faithful to, had their feet on

this earth of passions and death which is not a hothouse. They
would have been too plebeian for you since they had to lead, to

suffer with, to understand the commonest humanity. No, you are
merely of the topmost layer, disdainful and superior, the mere pure

froth and bubble on the inscrutable depths which some day will toss
you out of existence. But you are you! You are you! You are the

eternal love itself - only, O Divinity, it isn't your body, it is
your soul that is made of foam."

She listened as if in a dream. He had succeeded so well in his
effort to drive back the flood of his passion that his life itself

seemed to run with it out of his body. At that moment he felt as
one dead speaking. But the headlong wave returning with tenfold

force flung him on her suddenly, with open arms and blazing eyes.