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128 Dick's face was accustomed to hide what his brain felt.

"That sounds to be rather a left-handed compliment," he said. "People are usually good enough to say they don't have to guess twice at my efforts."

"Well, if you ask them they couldn't do less."

"You could, I think," said Dick, smiling.

"That is left-handed—straight from the shoulder. It did really look like a buffalo, but if you'll tell me you meant it for a pig I'll agree to that, too. I can't discourage you when you've been so nice to me."

"You discourage me every time I see you."

"I do? How?"

Before those clear, astonished eyes his own fell.

"Because I can never make out the real colours in your hair and eyes, and I'm supposed to be more or less of an artist," he said.

Jennifer laughed, and over the fire the talk slid down more intimate channels than it had touched yet. It had set them on a new but undefined basis when the storm was passed and Dick took her home under a sullen sky, leaving her on the threshold with an excuse when she would have made him come in. He preferred to take the long walk straight back to the barracks, for the last few hours had shaken him out of his usual cynical indifference more than he believed possible. The poise of Jennifer's head; her quick movements; her merry laugh and ways, and that alluring allusive tragedy in her eyes had fired the very depths of him. He would not think of her now. He would not think of what it was going to mean when she knew what he was doing for Ducane; when she knew what he was making her do. Resolutely he turned his mind from her on to Ogilvie and Robison. For that sketch was with- out doubt the missing sketch of Robison, and therefore, equally without doubt, one or both of those two men had seen Ogilvie after he was supposed to have disappeared from mortal knowledge. The eager light came back to his eyes, and he walked fast, with that hound-mind of his snuffing swiftly along this new bend in the trail.

Ducane met Jennifer in the passage. He had missed her, and had gone to the whiskey-bottle for comfort, as