whipped out of rage and power to retaliate, Virey fell to the sands. Adam dragged him into the shack and left him prostrate and moaning, an abject beaten wretch who realized his condition. Most difficult of all for Adam then was to face Mrs. Virey. Yet the instant he did he realized that his ignorance of women was infinite. “Did the bullet--when he fired--did it hit you?” she queried, her large eyes, intense and glowing, wonderfully dark with emotion, flashing over him. “No--it missed--me,” panted Adam, as with heavy breaths he sank upon the stone bench. “I picked up the gun. I was afraid he’d find it. You’d better keep it now,” she said, and slipped it into his pocket. “What a--dis--gusting--sight for you--to have--to watch!” exclaimed Adam, trying to speak and breathe at once. “It was frightful--terrible at first,” she returned. “But after the gun went flying--and you had stopped trying to make him eat the--the spider--uggh! how sickening!... After that it got to be-- Well, Wansfell, it was the first time in the years I’ve known my husband that I respected him. He meant to kill you. It amazed me. I admired him.... And as for you--to see you tower over him--and parry his blows--and hit him when you liked--and knock him and drag him--oh, that roused a terrible something in me! I never felt so before in my whole life. I was some other woman. I watched the blood flow, I heard the thuds and heavy breaths, I actually smelled the heat of you, I was so close--and it all inflamed me, made me strung with savage excitement--I had almost said joy.... God knows, Wansfell, we have hidden natures within our breasts.” “If only it’s a lesson to him!” sighed Adam. “Then it were well done,” she replied, “but I doubt--I doubt. Virey is hopeless. Let us forget.... And now will you please help me search in the sand here for something I dropped. It fell from my lap when I fainted, I suppose. It’s a small ivory case with a miniature I think all the world of. Last and best of my treasures!” Adam raked in the sand along the base of the bench, and presently found the lost treasure. How passionately, with what eloquent cry of rapture, did she clutch it! “Look!” she exclaimed, with wonderful thrill in her voice, and held the little case open before Adam’s eyes. He saw a miniature painting of a girl’s face, oval, pure as a flower, with beautiful curls of dark bronze, and magnificent eyes. In these last Adam recognized the mother of this girl. The look of them, the pride and fire, if not the color, were the same as Magdalene Virey’s. “A sweet and lovely face,” said Adam. “Ruth!” she whispered. “My daughter--my only child--my baby that I abandoned to save her happiness!... Oh, mockery of life that I was given such a heart to love--that I was given such a perfect child!” * * * * * The midsummer midnight furnace winds began to blow.