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dusk. Her eyes were closed and her face quite quiet. He was troubled to the soul.

“Liane!” he said, under his breath. “Not that!”

She turned to him again with a blind motion. His hands were on her shoulders and he almost held her off.

“It can’t be that,” he said again. “Oh, speak, Liane, petite sœur! We were just playing, and now—it is all different.”

She made a little sound, too slight to be called a moan, and drooped forward against his hands, her chin tilted up, and the long, lovely line of her throat showed dark against the green sky.

“All different,” she murmured, her lips hardly moving.

The boy groaned. “Oh, child, tell me what I’ve done!”

He felt her straighten herself and stiffen. She stood alone again, and her eyes met his keenly in the gathering dark.

“Nothing, mon ami. I am—just tired. Good night—et que le bon Dieu te bénisse.”

She slipped away round the veranda like a flash. He looked once at the house, it was dark altogether; Charbonnel was not home yet. So much the better, he did not feel inclined to see him.

He went down to the shore again, his brain seething. He did not sleep much that night, and in the morning he was no nearer peace than he had been before. He knew little of girls—nothing at all that helped him with Liane. Although he had matured unusually early, until the last year or so he had had nothing at all to do with women; literally, he had had no time for them. And afterwards, considering his nature, his excursions in search of experience had been remarkably few. Two opposing influences contributed to this result, his father’s and Alison’s. Long ago he had understood as much as a child can, and much more than any child ought, and that knowledge had filled him