"Her bedroom is on the other side of the house, looking down on to the woods. She will not see us, and she will never suspect that anyone is with me. She knows that I love the moonlight, and, besides, she will not dare to come out because of her fear." "I wonder what that fear is," said Gerald meditatively. "I do not know. But go now, dear Prince, and come again to-morrow night at ten o'clock. To-night you must not come lest Geary see you." "And if he did?" "Oh!" Mavis shivered. "I don't know what he would do. He is a terrible black man, and has a horrid knife with a yellow handle--a big knife, oh! so dangerous. He brought it from Jamaica: he told Bellaria so. He would kill you, if he found you." "I quite believe that," said Gerald grimly, and resolved to arm himself with a revolver when he next came to the Pixy's House. He was resolved not to die without a fight. "But don't worry, darling. I'll be all right. Goodbye. To-morrow night, then." He dropped from the wall and departed, while Mavis wailed that he had not kissed her. CHAPTER VI. THE PAST OF ADONIS GEARY. No; Gerald has not kissed her. He wished to very badly, but something in his heart--a strong sense of honor maybe--prevented his doing so until he had made his position clear to her. She was so simple, so innocent, so virginal that she knew nothing of passion, or of life, or of that world wherein women marry and are given in marriage. With an almost absurd particularity the young man desired that, before being kissed, she should learn that he was her true lover, that he wished to marry her, that he greatly desired to enter into a lifelong companionship with her. To act otherwise was to bind her unknowingly to him. When she understood what love meant, and was ready to accept him as her husband, then could he seal this acceptance with a kiss. For he knew full well that such a kiss would awaken the woman in her; would reveal life to her soul. A caress meant so much, that it was little wonder he restrained himself from following too hurriedly the desire of his heart. And perhaps it was that he found her innocence and friendly acceptance of his presence too delightful to transmute with unconsidered haste friendship into love. Why spoil this idyll of lilies by presenting her with the red ripe roses of love? The romance was so charming, so dreamlike, that the poetic instinct of the poet forbade him to rouse her. Mavis was indeed the Sleeping Beauty, slumbering within her enchanted palace, and he, the fated Prince--as it would seem he was from his finding of the cylinder--would in time awaken her with a kiss. But the hour had not yet struck. When it did, many things would come to pass.