patch of sunlight, motionless but for tongue and eyes, looked at him with head to one side--queer, quick, dried-looking little object!... And then--the end! What a Jezebel of cruelty he had thought her! Now he could see its wisdom and its mercy. By George! She had blown their wild weeks out like a candle-flame! Vanished! Vanished into the unknown as she had come from the unknown; left him to go, haggard and burnt-up, back to England and bank routine, to the social and moral solidity of a pillar of society.... Like that lizard whisking its tail and vanishing beneath the dead dry leaves, so she had vanished--as if into the earth. Could she ever have felt for him as he for her? Did women ever know such consuming fires? Trevillian shrugged his thin shoulders. She had seemed to; but--how tell? Queer cattle--women! Two nights he had sat here, waiting, sick with anxiety and longing. A third day he had watched outside the villa, closed, shuttered, abandoned; not a sound from it, not a living thing, but one white-and-yellow cat. He pitied himself even now, thinking of that last vigil. For three days more he had hung around, haunting Casino, garden, villa. No sign! No sign!... Trevillian rose; his back had given him another twinge. He examined the seat and his open prayer-book. Had he overlapped it, on to damp stone? He frowned, smoothing superstitiously the pages a little creased and over-flattened by his weight. Closing the book, he went towards the gate. Had those passionate hours been the best or the worst of his life? He did not know. He moved out into the hot sunshine and up the road. Round the corner he came suddenly abreast of the old villa. ‘It was here I stood,’ he thought; ‘just here!’ What was that caterwauling? Ah! The girl and the organ--there they were again! What! Why, of course! That long-ago morning a barrel organ had come while he stood there in despair. He could see it still, grinding away, with a monkey on it, and a woman singing that same silly tune. With a dry, dusty feeling he turned and walked on. What had he been thinking of before? Oh, ah! The Rolfe woman and that young fool Chesherford. Yes, he would certainly warn Agatha, certainly warn her. They were a loose lot out here! 1921. BLACKMAIL I