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"Oh!" Van Leason had forgotten. "Besides, you see I never knew much about-about gaieties!" Her voice was soft and hurried, as though something in his words, his impetuosity, had caught her breath. "My father is a pastor; and there were a lot of younger ones-I was only eighteen when I married.”

"And what are you now, I'd like to know?"

He spoke so rudely that he could. scarcely believe that she would answer him. But in her simplicity, her beautiful simplicity-like a good child that has been taught to speak when it is spoken to-she said: "I am twenty-one. I have been here three years. We shall remain for another seven years, and then, if we both live-"

"If you both live! And how much chance is there of that, do you think? Why, the place must be soaked, soaked through and through with fever and- Hullo! do you hear that? What's that? Drums?"

"Yes, drums-nothing but drums. . . We shall go home, and I shall see my mother. Charlotte will be nearly ten by then; and my—”

She broke off with a little gasp, as though taken aback by what she had been about to say, turning sideways in her chair.

"As if the silly fool didn't know that I must know she is going to have another child," thought Van Leason furiously, standing leaning his back against the veranda rail, deliberately and cruelly staring down at her. For the moon had risen over the sea, and they were flooded in a clear pale light, broken only by the slender shadow of the palms.

"What on earth are you going to

do with children here, I'd like to know?"

"I don't know-oh, I don't know

I try to think that the Lord will provide But-oh, the people here are SO horrible-horrible! I am frightened of them. Not for myself, at least not so much for myself now, but for the child- If Lottie were a boy it would be different," she added; her blanched and stiffened face, raised to his, altogether in shadow.

"Yes, well, that's it-that's exactly it. What in the name of all that's holy do you want to do it fora woman, and a girl child?”

"You don't understand. It's my husband's work-I must be where my husband is."

"Indeed!"

"He has to be about the Lord's work."

"The Lord's work-and what sort of a Lord is He, I'd like to know— what sort of a Lord-" Van Leason heard his own voice shouting "if it gives Him pleasure to have a white woman and child planted down here, among people like these! If—” he broke off suddenly, and his nerves must have been all on edge, jumping almost out of his skin, with a sharp, "What on earth's that?" as the persistent thrum-thrum—thrum of drums was cut through by a loud persistent cry, like the howl of a dog, the deafening banging of gongs; while leaning out over the veranda rail-as his own men, who had been squatting near, ran up to him for orders-looking toward the villages, he saw a thin pennant of light flame up to the sky, flash to and fro.

"What is that? Do you see that? What on earth are they up to now? Good God! don't you hear that?"

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She spoke quite calmly; and ashamed of his own excitement, Van Leason motioned his men aside with a gesture, and fetching the little stool out of the room sat down facing her. "I want you to tell me about yourself, your life here. I'm afraid I've been horribly rude-I don't know why. I... I... he was about to tell her what a rotten day it had been, and broke off, ashamed by the thought of her days; and quite suddenly, with a feeling as though he were floating away upon a peaceful smooth stream, he found himself talking of home; while from the moment that he discovered she had come from Leiden, so near to his own home at Warmand, the whole atmosphere of Holland-the quiet, the homely joys, the solid sense of well-being, the moonshine, so much softer and more delicate than it was here in the tropics-lay about them like a caress.

It was very late when, leaving two of his men on guard at the missionary's house, he once more passed through the village-wrapped in a sudden complete darkness, silence-hailed his dinghy and went back on board his prau; lying upon the deck wrapped in a blanket, with the dew on his face, in a pleasant half-waking dream.

When he went on shore next morning everything was different. He was in a hurry to get away before the sun rose; exasperated because,

anxiously hospitable, the missionary's wife wished to keep him until coffee was made; aggrieved with her because she had slept and he had not, because her hair was loosened and not very tidy; because her condition showed in a way that it had not done the night before, when the very thought of it had filled him with a strange tenderness of which he was now ashamed. These missionaries! After all it was their business if they chose to poke their heads into hornets' nests, persist in keeping them there.

The village had looked dirtier than ever as he passed through it, but it was no longer horrible, merely empty and dull. Everything, indeed, was dull in the ugly light which was yet a glare long before the sun topped the mountains.

To add to this, the child was crying persistently, would take no notice of him-and it was odd how this hurt his vanity; anyhow she was a sickly little thing.

Oh, well, the mountains might be dangerous; but anyhow there would be some air there, very different from this confounded place with an atmosphere like a frowzy and unaired bedroom.

Three days after the lieutenant had gone into the mountains the missionary arrived home. For more than a week he had been upon the open sea, and his eyes were raw and bloodshot, though he wore dark glasses, his skin bleached.

His wife saw his prau in the distance and with their child went to meet him. Directly he stepped on shore, even while he was embracing and kissing them both, with that strange air of detachment which,

gentle as she was, made her wonder, rather angrily, if he knew what he was doing, was not acting quite mechanically in a sort of trance, as he did at meals-and she had asked herself that upon her actual wedding night, overcome by an anguished access of loneliness, for at no other time in her life can a woman feel more desperately alone and separate -she was telling him of the visit of the lieutenant.

"He was so pleasant, Charles, I know you would have liked him, enjoyed talking to him. We never stopped talking about-about—” For a moment she wavered, wondering what they actually had talked of. Then her mind caught at the more obvious details. "Fancy, Charles, only fancy, he himself comes from a place quite close to Leiden-Warmand. He knows everything and every one in Leiden. There was a full moon, and we spoke of how it first shows under, then rises above, the bridges-you know, you've seen it-the light beneath rounded and cut by the water, like a cut lemon."

The missionary was carrying the child, and she walked by his side, her arm in his, dancing with excitement.

"He stayed quite late. There was a terrible noise going on in the heathen village-that priest, you know. A few days before, he had broken through the fence and come right up to the veranda. I wasn't frightened that he would kill meanything like that-but, Charles, Charles, I was terribly frightened of -of him-u-g-gh!"

"You must have faith; we are in God's hands."

"But, Charles-I know you don't like me to speak of it--but when they

sacrificed that boy. God-" Her religious education had gone too deep to allow her to ask, "What was God doing then?" Instead of this she said, after the faintest pause: "Things do happen, you know—" slipping her hand out of her husband's arm as she spoke, while her already white face bleached-"his screamshis dreadful screams! And laterhis body nailed to a tree and slashed to pieces. . . his feet pierced and a bowl beneath them from which the people drank-I saw them!" She shuddered from head to foot.

"But, dear one, that was a long time ago!" The missionary spoke vaguely but kindly, in his faint, faraway voice, with the sweat running down his face into his eyes. For the child was too heavy for him to carry on one arm, and he was unable to raise a hand to wipe the sweat away.

Then suddenly his voice kindled, his face became even more brightly flushed. "Dear one, God has blessed my work upon this journey. It shows me how wrong we are to be downcast. Eleven converts-eleven mortal souls sealed into His hand. Every one of them willing and ready to go out among their fellows and spread the good news. Gertrude, I sometimes wonder what we have ever done to deserve such happiness.'

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for granted that they will do again," murmured his wife.

But the missionary did not answer. When he reached his own veranda, after greeting his few Christians exuberantly, almost boisterously, telling them of their fellows whom God had drawn to follow their lead, he knelt down to give thanks for the blessings which had attended upon his efforts, his safe return; but his wife did not kneel-though her condition was excuse enough for that sat upon the same stool upon which Van Leason had doubled up his length, staring through her fingers at the floor.

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Another three days and the missionary was off again up the coast on his prau; for his late success had set the fever for proselytizing freshly aflame within him, and he was like a man possessed by a longing for strong drink, to the exclusion of all else.

Two days later Van Leason was back again.

Just as the darkness fell the missionary's wife found him sitting on the veranda, hunched together on the little bench, no more than a solider shadow among other shadows. As he dragged himself slowly to his feet, his dim face struck her as strangely white, oddly elongated. "Why, it's not him at all—altogether different from what I had fancied," she thought confusedly, with that memory of something boyishly fresh, the almost aggressive cocksureness and youth, like a cool breeze from some more invigorating clime. She herself was trembling from head to foot as she put her child to the ground; stood stupidly silent with no attempt to greet him.

"I had to turn back." His voice was flatter and older. "We got on a wrong track. It ended in nothing but forests, impossible to get through

forests and precipices. We'll have to start afresh-shall want more provisions. The steamer's coming in to-morrow, isn't it?"

"Yes, to-morrow." Every two months a small branch steamer touched-and but just touchedwith mails at the island. In general the missionary's wife thought of nothing else for days and days beforehand, could not sleep for excitement; but now she had forgotten it. It was odd to feel dead like this, not caring about anything, just waiting.

"I will light the lamp-get you some supper. Lottie is nearly asleep."

"Here; give her to me." Sitting down again Van Leason lifted the child to his knee, drew her to him; pressed the little body against his own with a sense of comfort, a feeling as though something within himself were unsealed at the contact.

Of the remainder of that evening they could have told you nothing. Neither of them was, indeed, conscious of anything beyond a deep depression which was almost despair; a depression in which each hung, almost intolerably, upon the consciousness of the other; ached with the weight of the other: though it was still early when she bestirred herself to bring out a mattress, with his help, hang a mosquito-curtain from the rafters; for the prau was anchored further up the coast, and it was impossible for him to get aboard her that night.

The instant that Van Leason's head touched the pillow he dropped asleep as though he had been shot.

The missionary's wife also slept, was conscious of nothing beyond the straight stretching out of her limbs beneath the sheet. Quite suddenly, however, she awoke, heard her own voice crying out, "Yes, yes," as though in answer to some one who had called her, and dropping her feet to the floor, without even waiting for a light, moved swiftly, with outstretched hands, through the sittingroom and on to the veranda; caught her foot in the hem of Van Leason's mosquito-curtain, which he had thrown aside as he sprang up, and found herself in his arms.

Neither spoke; they did not even kiss each other. For a moment or so for no time at all-for an eternity -in thinking it over afterward neither of them had any realization of the time, as time-he held her in his arms, close pressed to him. Then she was gone, had thrown herself upon her own bed, dropped into a second heavy sleep; a sleep from which she did not, either mentally or spiritually, awake until next day, when he was once more gone; the steamer gone, and everything-everything of which she had not so much as realized the beginning, at an end.

As for Van Leason all that morning, boarding the steamer, wheedling everything he could out of the unwilling captain, seeing to his men, the young lieutenant seemed to forget her. Later on, as he paused to breathe upon the first mountain height, the thought came to him, "Why, I don't even know what on earth she looks like!" though even at that moment the blankness of oblivion was pierced by a sudden sharp picture of her, her fairness, her wide blue-gray eyes, her soft trem

bling mouth; a picture so intensely vivid that it seemed in some strange way to be sliced into himself, with the feel of her in his arms, a burden which he was to carry with him through the forests and over the mountains, feel close pressed against his breast as he sat by his camp-fire at night, instinctively move to protect at the first breath of danger. Something so altogether native to himself, so intimate, that all planning, all clear practical thought was out of the question, and he might just as well have asked himself what he was to do with his own skin, how live in it, with it, as what he was to do about her, with her.

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A month later, as he once more dipped into the narrow strip of palms lying between the foot of the mountain and the shore, with the bungalow at the edge of it, Van Leason became aware of a European in a white shirt and trousers, his coat on the ground at his side, bending over a spade, smoothing the soil. Drawing nearer, seeing a small thin man, like a little white mouse, with a peaked nose and high cheek-bones, flecked with a bright spot of color, heaping up and smoothing the loose powdery sand, he realized that this could be no one else but the missionary, who, looking up and realizing him, moved a step or so to meet him, put out a white hand, slender and blue-veined as a woman's. He was dripping with sweat and trembling from head to foot, for though the sand had been so soft, it had kept on slipping back as he dug in it; and he was weakened from fever.

"You must be the Mynheer Lieutenant Van Leason? My wife has told

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