Having come to this determination, Christina, with characteristic good sense, put away from her all thoughts of self-consciousness and embarrassment, and allowed herself to enjoy Mernside's visit, with much the same childish delight as was evinced by Baba. And if the two showed their pleasure in different ways, it was none the less patent to their visitor, that the little nurse, with her big green eyes and dusky cloud of hair, took as much pleasure in his coming as did the golden-haired baby; and it gave him an odd glow of satisfaction to see her eyes brighten as he talked, and to watch the swift soft flushes of colour that came and went in her cheeks. Rupert, when he chose, could talk well and interestingly; he had travelled over the greater part of the world, and in the course of his travels had used eyes and ears to good purpose. And to Christina, the little travelled--to Christina, the whole sum of whose existence had been divided between a Devonshire village, the Donaldsons' suburban house, and a London lodging--all that Rupert told of distant countries, and strange, uncouth peoples was breathlessly interesting and entrancing. Sitting there in the firelight, Baba nestled closely in his arms, Christina seated opposite to him, her chin propped on her hands, her eager eyes following his every word--Rupert found himself talking as he had not talked for a long time with an eager boyish interest that surprised himself. It was only when some chance word of his led Christina to ask him a question about Biskra, that the flow of his eloquence suddenly ceased. It was there, in that garden of the desert, that he had first met Margaret. The girl's gently-asked question, for some inexplicable reason, brought back to him, as though it were only yesterday, the afternoon when the woman who ever since had dominated his whole existence, had first come into his life. Overhead, the deep pure depths of the bluest sky he had ever seen, against its blue stately palms that waved their fan-like leaves with the soft rustling sounds that only belong to the palm-trees; and there in the sunlight, stately as one of the great trees, her white gown falling about her, Margaret had stood, her dark eyes turned towards the all-surrounding desert. How or why they had begun to speak, he could not now recall, but from that first speech of fellow-countrymen in a far-off land, they had passed into acquaintanceship, and from that by easy stages to the friendship which he had implored her to give him, in default of that which she had told him could never be his. Well! at least in the years that followed, he had been able to serve her, to help her, to ease some of the burden of her life, that burden of which he himself knew so little. And to have served her was something for which to be thankful. If only--there was the bitterness--if only she had not gone away out of his ken now, in this strange mysterious fashion, leaving him ignorant of her