"How can I tell, sweetest? I had been thinking, as I said, a lot about you--and missing a lot--stockings, and all that"--his smile was charm itself; "then, when I saw your dear old head bob up all shaven and shorn!" he kissed it deliberately, and she laughed. "For all that," she persisted, "I should like to understand." "My dearest dear," he replied, "you are such a beggar for wanting to know and understand. Now I, my dear Marmie--I'm too happy to want to know anything! I'm content with what I have--and you are content, too, you know you are!" There was no denying the fact. Content, indeed, was no word for the feeling that you were rapt away from the very possibility of care. There, in the very shadow of the grave, overlooking the Lake of Death, those two lovers found their joy enhanced by the uncertainty of life. "I was chief mourner at six funerals this morning," Marmaduke would say sadly. "As fine fellows as ever stepped. Sometimes I wonder, darlingest, if I ought to come to you----" "You can bring no more harm to me than I am in already," she would reply. "I am in the thick of it here. Indeed, I was wondering if I ought to let you come." "Let me!" he would echo derisively. "As if you could stop me." And in truth there was no gainsaying him, for Marmaduke, easy-going as a friend, was an imperious lover. After he left her in the dawnings Marrion would take out the pocket Shakespeare she had brought with her and, sitting out under the purpling vines, read how the immortal lovers parted. "I am content so thou wouldst have it so." She had never before realised that so lay the very essence of love. No plannings, no cuttings, no contrivings. All things simplified, clarified. It was a wonderful fortnight. The fire, after a brief recrudescence, died down, leaving the slums of the city in ruins, but purified. So cholera, most mysterious of diseases, abated, disappeared from the town; and even in the camps, exposed to the miasma of the Lake of Death, was shorn of half its terrors. And there was a stir as of coming life in the military backwaters. Marmaduke, his face alight, would say that the one thing needful to perfect happiness must be close at hand; for that was the curious thing about finding yourself in love--you wanted to be up and doing all the time. And so one day when, instead of Marmaduke, Andrew Fraser--long since let into the secret of Maryam Effendi--appeared with a note, Marrion tried to echo Romeo's words without any reservations, and to be content if he would have it so. For the note ran as follows: "HEART'S DELIGHT,