His encircling arms trembled with the passion that surged in him, and the slender little form he held was swayed by the convulsive movement of his body. These appeals of her husband to something within her of which she had but a dim consciousness, bewildered and distressed a creature accustomed to live fully and happily in the day’s emotions, beautifully unconscious of higher duties, higher claims. She was, however, moved to a soft sensation of pity for this big, kind, splendid companion whose passionate affection was, after all, the kingly crown of all her joys; and she put little tender arms round his neck in the belief that these mad frenzies after something intangible were signs of a disorder peculiar to man, of which that dangerous symptom jealousy was the chief feature. “Of course I love you, George, my dear old beautiful darling elephant,” she said, with the soothing accent of an affection which was indeed perfectly genuine. And she kissed the waves of his hair with such a winning abandonment of herself to the pleasure his touch afforded her, and dropped down into his breast with such a seductive air of meek submission to his will in every act and thought, that George was carried away from his doubts, away from his questionings, as he had been a hundred times before, and so she strengthened her empire over him in the interview which had at the outset appeared to threaten it. It was not until he had left her, and was on his way to the church, that a momentary gloom fell on the glow into which the magic of her charm had cast him. She had been very sweet, but she had given no word of explanation of that strange request to Captain Pascoe, a man of a character so well known, that it was gall to George to think he had in his possession so much as a line of his wife’s handwriting. With an effort he put the matter aside in his mind, not without the unpleasant reflection that, after all his efforts at art-education, the primitive and impracticable methods of the harem were those best calculated to keep the husband of the little dark-skinned enchantress in security. A walk of a few minutes had brought him to the outside of the church where he was married, but he found the building a true type of Heaven in the difficulty of getting in. At last he ferreted out the person authorised to unlock the doors, and admit him to a sight of the register. It was with trembling fingers that he turned over the pages to find the signature he wanted. When at last he found the place, he bit his lip through in a first impulse of hot indignation. He had been tricked again by the whole gang, as he said to himself bitterly, within five minutes of his standing with his bride before the altar. The signature of his wife was “Nouna Kilmorna.” CHAPTER XXII.