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386 eyes Dick knew what he had done. Of course she did not know that he was within a thousand miles; two thousand; five. She would think that his spirit had come to tell her of his death. She would think

"Good Lord," he said. "I've frightened the life out of her," and he ran hastily to the door into the side-hall.

Then he remembered that his disappearance would put more truth to her fear, and he cursed himself for a clumsy fool as he wrenched the door open; shed his heavy furs and cap in one movement, and thrust open the sitting-room door. Jennifer heard his feet, and she turned. She saw him at the door, but she could not believe. His face was so thin and his dark eyes looked so far back under those heavy brows.

"Jennifer!" he said; and with a queer, choked cry, she put out her hands to him, tottering where she stood.

Then she felt herself swept up in his arms, and his kisses on her; warm, strong, quick kisses over her lips and her eyes and her hair. She clung to him blindly, passionately; sobbing in little gasps, and incapable of any but the one thought that he had come back to her. He had come back, and all the terrible blanks of her life were filled by the touch of his lips and his arms.

He held her close, speaking with tender, broken words such as no one had ever heard on his tongue before. To the end of her life she remembered the smell of the wood-smoke in his clothes; the roughness of his coat-collar where her tears wetted it; the shaking gentleness of his voice. He carried her over to the lounge by the open fire, and put her on it; sitting beside her with his arms round her yet, and his hand stroking her hair.

"I told you it had to come to this," he said unsteadily. "Darling—my darling—don't shiver so. It's all right, dear. It's all right now."

"I thought you were dead," she sobbed. "When I saw—I thought you were dead."

"I know. I know. Stupid brute that I was to frighten you so. You know better now, sweetheart, don't you? Are these the kisses of a dead man?"

He was controlling himself with difficulty. Ducane was forgotten; his own black, fierce fight with himself was for-