continued. drink."

"That is why so many men take to

She thought of the evening before and of what De Vaux had let out at breakfast. She said nothing; so he went on:

"That is why so many men become inveterate gamblers; why so many who came out with high hopes of accomplishing something end by committing suicide."

As he talked on in this strain, quietly, yet evidently with deep feeling, Miss MacAllister began to ask herself if she had not, in her own mind, judged this young aristocrat too harshly. Perhaps he was not so bad as she had thought him the evening before, when she had refused any longer to play his accompaniments. Perhaps there was some excuse for his being in the condition which De Vaux had blundered out to them that morning.

At any rate, he seemed to be revealing to her another side of his character. She had met him first as the graceful, polished man of the world, a little cynical perhaps, and yet so courteous in his manners towards her as to hide the unpleasant characteristics. She had noted his contemptuous attitude towards Sinclair, his look and tone of studied insult. She had caught a glimpse of the greedy, lustful expression in his eyes as he bent over her at the piano, and, before the evening was done, the leer of intoxication.

But here was another aspect which she had not looked for. Without appearing to seek sympathy, he was appealing to her feelings, and in spite of herself she responded:

"I had not thought of the life out here in that way," she said. "It had appeared quite fascinating

to me."

"So it appears to nearly everybody at first. But after a while it palls upon them. At last it becomes unbearable."

"Then why do they not go home, or to Australia or America or somewhere else where they would be among their own people?"

"We are forgotten at home. We should be strangers there. And as for Australia or America, life out here unfits a man to succeed in lands where everybody must be his own servant and where there is no road to success but by hard work."

A little ray of comprehension shot into Miss MacAllister's mind. It was with a touch of impatience that she answered:

"But, Mr. Carteret, you do not mean to say that you have been long enough here to unfit you for work anywhere else. If you do not like the life, why do you stay here?"

"Pro bono familia," he replied with a bitter laugh. "Because of the affection of my beloved elder brother."

The consul tells me that he enjoys himself here," she said, avoiding any discussion of his family affairs. "He says that there is very good shooting and some of the best sea-bathing he has ever experienced."

"He is welcome to the shooting, tramping over the hills and through the rice fields in a climate like this. As for the bathing, any pleasure in it is spoiled by the walk home in the heat afterwards."

At that instant the consul, who was playing, returned a ball with such a screw on it that after falling in his opponent's court it bounded back over the net. His opponent, in a mad effort to return it, plunged

headlong into the net and fell. In celebration of which achievement the consul threw his racket high in the air, turned a handspring, and ended up by reversing himself and walking across the court on his hands, with his feet in the air.

"Splendid, Mr. Beauchamp!" cried Miss MacAllister. Brilliantly done! Especially the gymnastic performance!"

"Right-oh, Miss MacAllister!" exclaimed a deep voice behind her. "The consul is acrobat enough to make a shining success as a sailor man."

It was Captain Whiteley, come up to drink a cup of tea and say good-bye before casting off for HongKong.

66

Oh, Captain Whiteley, I'm so glad to see you before you go! But what is this I hear? You have let your doctor go off to Keelung to carve Chinese, and perhaps be carved himself. I am surprised at you."

"Not my fault, I assure you, Miss MacAllister. He was bound to go. He is of age. I could not restrain him."

"I think it is just splendid of him to go. That is the sort of thing I admire in a man. If I were a man, that is what I should like to do."

"I am awfully glad, Miss MacAllister, that Sinclair has at last done something which pleases you. I was beginning to be afraid that you were offended with him past the possibility of reconciliation."

She looked at him sharply. His face was lamblike in its innocence, but his eyes were twinkling.

'That will do, Captain Whiteley. You have said quite enough."

The telltale colour deepened in her face, and her

mother, who was talking to Carteret nearby, heard and saw, closed her lips tightly, and sniffed.

The little party of white-clad players were still on the lawn when the Hailoong moved down the river, zigzagged her way through the field of mines, and once well beyond the bar steamed straight out over the motionless sea in the path of red-gold light from the setting sun. It seemed the breaking of the one link between them and the outside world. In the soft stillness of that evening in the Orient, London with its mud and smoke, its roar of traffic, its drab colours and familiar, unromantic life, seemed so far away that it might have belonged to another world.

Strange to say, it was not of London that Miss MacAllister was thinking. Again and again she surprised herself thinking of the big, fair-haired Canadian doctor. She tried to picture to herself his surroundings amid the sick and suffering, the men torn with shot and shell. She could not help contrasting them with the peaceful environment of the consul's tennis party, where men had been enjoying themselves in the company of the ladies, and incidentally emptying long glasses of whiskey and soda or sipping tea.

She recalled the looks of the man himself, his cleancut features, straightforward gaze, his good-humour even when she was badgering him, and the hearty, boyish laugh when he and McLeod were plotting some mischief together. Involuntarily she contrasted him with the cynical discontent, the weary air and self-pity of the man with whom she had talked that afternoon. If Sinclair could have known her conclusions, he would have been well content.

B

XVI

SERGEANT WHATISNAME

UT Sinclair did not know. Perhaps at that mo

ment he was not thinking much about her. He

was just entering on his long night's work among the wounded. Every power of mind was concentrated on the problem of those pain-racked human beings and how to relieve their sufferings.

And yet ever and anon, when he had finished an operation and his mind relaxed as his hands almost mechanically followed the familiar process of bandaging, a picture floated before his eyes. It was only a transparency, through which he could see every line of the brown limb or body he was binding up with care. But it was as clear to him as though it had been done on canvas by the brush of a painter. It was the picture of a proudly-carried head, with a crown of brown hair, a beautiful oval face with rich colour, dark violet eyes dancing with fun, and full red lips parted in a teasing laugh, which made the hot blood tingle in his face at the very memory of it.

As the days passed by he had more time to think of that face. The first strenuous days over, the pressure on his time and strength relaxed somewhat. A number of the greatest sufferers died. But in the majority of cases the singular toughness and marvellous recuperative power of the Chinese seconded his skilful surgery. Many a man who, if he had belonged to any Western nation, would have been invalided home,