"Oh, no," he laughed; "not dead. He only sleeps, with a cloth and chloroform upon his face. He is not dead!" With a movement swift as a bounding deer, she sprang across the room, seized the cloth and hurled it from the window. She added names that her maiden cheeks would have paled at, and pressed her face to his, kissing the still and silent lips and moaning piteously. The man at the door drew away suddenly, went to the stairway and passed down. No sound was heard now in the house except the moaning of the girl upstairs. He put on a hat in the hall below, closed the door cautiously and prepared to depart as he had come, when again he paused irresolute. Then he drew from his pocket a crumpled paper and read it. And there, under that one jet which fell upon him in the great hall, something was born that night in the heart of Amos Royson--something that proved him for the moment akin to the gods. The girl had glided down the steps and was fleeing past him for succor. He caught her arm. "Wait," he said gently. "I will help you!" She ceased to struggle and looked appealingly into his face. "I have not much to say, but it is for eternity. The man upstairs is now in no immediate danger. Mary, I have loved you as I did not believe myself capable of loving anyone. It is the glorious spot in the desert of my nature. I have been remorseless with men; it all seemed war to me, a war of Ishmaelites--civilized war is an absurdity. Had you found anything in me to love, I believe it would have made me another man, but you did not. And none can blame you. To-night, for every kind word you have spoken to Amos Royson, for the note you sent him to-day, he will repay you a thousandfold. Come with me." He half-lifted her up the steps and to the room of the sleeper. Then wringing out wet towels he bathed the face and neck of the unconscious man, rubbed the cold wrists and feet and forced cold water into the mouth. It was a doubtful half-hour, but at last the sleeper stirred and moaned. Then Royson paused. "He will awaken presently. Give me half an hour to get into a batteau on the river and then you may tell him all. That--" he said, after a pause, looking out of the window, through which was coming the distant clamor of bells--"that indicates that Annie has waked and screamed. And now good-by. I could have taken your lover's life." He picked up the picture from the table, kissed it once and passed out. Mary was alone with her lover. Gradually under her hand consciousness came back and he realized that the face in the light by him was not of dreams but of life itself--that life which, but for her and the gentleness of her woman's heart, would have passed out that night at Ilexhurst. And as he drifted back again into consciousness under the willows of the creeping river a little boat drifted toward the sea.