"There are people here! Don't you understand?" she said once more in a choking voice; but he only advanced, and she fell back before him to the very edge of the porch lattice. "Now listen to me!" he said between his teeth. "I love you and I'll never give you up----" Suddenly she turned on him, hands tightly clenched: "Be silent!" she whispered fiercely. "I tell you what you say is indecent, revolting! If there were a man here he'd kill you! Do you understand?" At the same instant his eyes became fixed on a figure in white which took shadowy shape on the dark veranda, rising and coming slowly forward. Ghostlike as it was he knew it instantly, stood rooted in his tracks while Strelsa stole away from him through the star-lit gloom, farther, farther, slipping forever from him now--he knew that as he stood there staring like a damned man upon that other dim shape in the darkness beyond. It was his first glimpse of her since her return from Reno. And now, unbidden, memories half strangled were already in full resurrection, gasping in his ears of things that had been--of forgotten passion, of pleasure promised; and, because never tasted, it had been the true and only pleasure for such a man as he--the pleasure of anticipation. But the world had never, would never believe that. Only he, and the phantom there in the dusk before him, knew it to be true. Slightly reeling he turned away in the darkness. In his haunted ears sounded a young wife's voice, promising, caressing; through and through him shot a thrill of the old excitement, the old desire, urging him again toward belated consummation. And again the old impatience seized him, the old ruthlessness, the old anger at finding her weak in every way except one, the old contempt which had turned to sullen amazement when she wrote him that she had gone to Reno and that they must wait for their happiness until the courts decreed it legal. Now as he swung along under the high stars he was thinking of these things. And he felt that he had not tried her enough, had not really exerted himself--that women who are fools require closer watching than clever ones; that he could have overcome her scruples with any real effort and saved her from giving him the slip and sowing a wind in Reno which already had become enough of a breeze to bother him. With her, for a while, he might be able to distract his mind from this recent obsession tormenting him. To overcome her would interest him; and he had no doubt it could be done--for she was a little fool--silly enough to slap the world in the face and brave public opinion at Reno. No--it was not necessary to marry such a woman. She might think so, but it wasn't.