She became a little agitated. He could feel her lips moving, but they said no audible word.

He waited in silence. And suddenly she raised her face and looked at him fully. There was a glory in her eyes such as he had never seen before.

"I dreamt last night that the wonderfullest thing happened," she said, her red lips quivering close to his own. "Billikins, what if--the dream came true?"

A hot wave of feeling went through him at her words. He crushed her to him, feeling the quick beat of her heart against his own, the throbbing surrender of her whole being to his. He kissed her burningly, with such a pa.s.sion of devotion as had never before moved him.

She laughed rapturously. "Isn't it great, Billikins?" she said. "And I'd have missed it all if it hadn't been for you. Just think--if I hadn't jumped--before the safety-curtain--came--down!"

She was speaking between his kisses, and eventually they stopped her.

"Don't think," he said; "don't think!"

It was the beginning of a new era, the entrance of a new element into their lives. Perhaps till that night he had never looked upon her wholly in the light of wife. His blind pa.s.sion for her had intoxicated him.

She had been to him an elf from fairyland, a being elusive who offered him all the magic of her love, but upon whom he had no claims. But from that night his att.i.tude towards her underwent a change. Very tenderly he took her into his own close keeping. She had become human in his eyes, no longer a wayward sprite, but a woman, eager-hearted, and his own. He gave her reverence because of that womanhood which he had only just begun to visualize in her. Out of his pa.s.sion there had kindled a greater fire. All that she had in life she gave him, glorying in the gift, and in return he gave her love.

All through the days that followed he watched over her with unfailing devotion--a devotion that drew her nearer to him than she had ever been before. She was ever responsive to his mood, keenly susceptible to his every phase of feeling. But, curiously, she took no open notice of the change in him. She was sublimely happy, and like a child she lived upon happiness, asking no questions. He never saw her other than content.

Slowly that month of deadly rain wore on. The Plains had become a vast and fetid swamp, the atmosphere a weltering, steamy heat, charged with fever, leaden with despair.

But Puck was like a singing bird in the heart of the wilderness. She lived apart in a paradise of her own, and even the colonel had to relent again and bestow his grim smile upon her.

"Merryon's a lucky devil," he said, and everyone in the mess agreed with him.

But, "You wait!" said Macfarlane, the doctor, with gloomy emphasis.

"There's more to come."

It was on a night of awful darkness that he uttered this prophecy, and his hearers were in too overwhelming a state of depression to debate the matter.

Merryon's bungalow was actually the only one in the station in which happiness reigned. They were sitting together in his den smoking a great many cigarettes, listening to the perpetual patter of the rain on the roof and the drip, drip, drip of it from gutter to veranda, superbly content and "completely weather-proof," as Puck expressed it.

"I hope none of the boys will turn up to-night," she said. "We haven't room for more than two, have we?"

"Oh, someone is sure to come," responded Merryon. "They'll be getting bored directly, and come along here for coffee."

"There's someone there now," said Puck, c.o.c.king her head. "I think I shall run along to bed and leave you to do the entertaining. Shall I?"

She looked at him with a mischievous smile, very bright-eyed and alert.

"It would be a quick method of getting rid of them," remarked Merryon.

She jumped up. "Very well, then. I'll go, shall I? Shall I, darling?"

He reached out a hand and grasped her wrist. "No," he said, deliberately, smiling up at her. "You'll stay and do your duty--unless you're tired," he added. "Are you?"

She stooped to bestow a swift caress upon his forehead. "My own Billikins!" she murmured. "You're the kindest husband that ever was. Of course, I'm going to stay."

She could scarcely have effected her escape had she so desired, for already a hand was on the door. She turned towards it with the roguish smile still upon her lips.

Merryon was looking at her at the moment. She interested him far more than the visitor, whom he guessed to be one of the subalterns. And so looking, he saw the smile freeze upon her face to a mask-like immobility. And very suddenly he remembered a man whom he had once seen killed on a battlefield--killed instantaneously--while laughing at some joke. The frozen mirth, the starting eyes, the awful vacancy where the soul had been--he saw them all again in the face of his wife.

"Great heavens, Puck! What is it?" he said, and sprang to his feet.

In the same instant she turned with the movement of one tearing herself free from an evil spell, and flung herself violently upon his breast.

"Oh, Billikins, save me--save me!" she cried, and broke into hysterical sobbing.

His arms were about her in a second, sheltering her, sustaining her. His eyes went beyond her to the open door.

A man was standing there--a bulky, broad-featured, coa.r.s.e-lipped man with keen black eyes that twinkled maliciously between thick lids, and a black beard that only served to emphasize an immensely heavy under-jaw.

Merryon summed him up swiftly as a Portuguese American with more than a dash of darker blood in his composition.

He entered the room in a fashion that was almost insulting. It was evident that he was summing up Merryon also.

The latter waited for him, stiff with hostility, his arms still tightly clasping Puck's slight, cowering form. He spoke as the stranger advanced, in his voice a deep menace like the growl of an angry beast protecting its own.

"Who are you? And what do you want?"

The stranger's lips parted, showing a gleam of strong white teeth. "My name," he said, speaking in a peculiarly soft voice that somehow reminded Merryon of the hiss of a reptile, "is Leo Vulcan. You have heard of me? Perhaps not. I am better known in the Western Hemisphere.

You ask me what I want?" He raised a brown, hairy hand and pointed straight at the girl in Merryon's arms. "I want--my wife!"

Puck's cry of anguish followed the announcement, and after it came silence--a tense, hard-breathing silence, broken only by her long-drawn, agonized sobbing.

Merryon's hold had tightened all unconsciously to a grip; and she was clinging to him wildly, convulsively, as she had never clung before. He could feel the horror that pulsed through her veins; it set his own blood racing at fever-speed.

Over her head he faced the stranger with eyes of steely hardness. "You have made a mistake," he said, briefly and sternly.

The other man's teeth gleamed again. He had a way of lifting his lip when talking which gave him an oddly b.e.s.t.i.a.l look. "I think not," he said. "Let the lady speak for herself! She will not--I think--deny me."

There was an intolerable sneer in the last sentence. A sudden awful doubt smote through Merryon. He turned to the girl sobbing at his breast.

"Puck," he said, "for Heaven's sake--what is this man to you?"

She did not answer him; perhaps she could not. Her distress was terrible to witness, utterly beyond all control.

But the newcomer was by no means disconcerted by it. He drew near with the utmost a.s.surance.

"Allow me to deal with her!" he said, and reached out a hand to touch her.

But at that action Merryon's wrath burst into sudden flame. "Curse you, keep away!" he thundered. "Lay a finger on her at your peril!"

The other stood still, but his eyes gleamed evilly. "My good sir," he said, "you have not yet grasped the situation. It is not a pleasant one for you--for either of us; but it has got to be grasped. I do not happen to know under what circ.u.mstances you met this woman; but I do know that she was my lawful wife before the meeting took place. In whatever light you may be pleased to regard that fact, you must admit that legally she is my property, not yours!"

"Oh, no--no--no!" moaned Puck.

Merryon said nothing. He felt strangled, as if a ligature about his throat had forced all the blood to his brain and confined it there.

After a moment the bearded man continued: "You may not know it, but she is a dancer of some repute, a circ.u.mstance which she owes entirely to me. I picked her up, a mere child in the streets of London, turning cart-wheels for a living. I took her and trained her as an acrobat. She was known on the stage as Toby the Tumbler. Everyone took her for a boy.

Later, she developed a talent for dancing. It was then that I decided to marry her. She desired the marriage even more than I did." Again he smiled his brutal smile.