"Here he is now--don't you see him?" Helen looked out. There came the tall, familiar figure she knew so well, the square shoulders, the thick bushy hair, with its single white lock so strangely isolated among the brown. Her heart fell as she saw the blue glasses. They veiled from her view those dear blue eyes, so kind and true. They made him look different. But what did she care as long as he had come home to her? Even with the horrid glasses, that dear form she would know in a thousand! Slowly he came up the long flight of stone steps, weighted down by traveling rugs and handbag, both of which he refused to surrender to the obsequious Francois. Eagerly she rushed down the steps to meet him, her eyes half-closed, ready to swoon from excitement and joy. Nothing was said. He opened his arms. She put up her mouth, tenderly, submissively. For a moment he seemed to hesitate. He held her tight in his embrace, and just looked down at her. Then, as he felt the warmth of her soft, yielding body next to his, and saw the partly opened mouth, ready to receive his kiss, he bent down and fastened his lips on hers. CHAPTER XII For one blissful, ecstatic moment Helen lay tight in his embrace, nestling against the breast of the one being she loved better than anyone else in the world, responding with involuntary vibrations of her own body to the gust of fiery passion that swept his. But only for a moment. The next instant she had torn herself violently free, and was gazing, wonderingly, fearfully, up into his face, trying to penetrate those glasses which veiled, as it were, the windows of his soul. Why she broke away so abruptly from his embrace she could not herself have explained. Something within her, some instinct to which her reason was unable to give a name, made her body revolt against the unusual ardor of the caress. Strange! Never before had she felt so embarrassed at Kenneth's demonstrations of affection. "How are you, dear?" she murmured, when at last she could find words. She had not yet heard the sound of his beloved voice, and when at last he answered her it seemed to her ears only like an echo of its former self, so exhausted and wearied was he by what he had gone through. "Very tired, sweetheart," he replied huskily. "I shall need a long rest."