THE HOUR OF VENGEANCE For perhaps twenty seconds after the last echoes of the gun had rolled through the forest the girl lay passive in Nathaniel's arms, so close that he could feel her heart beating against his own and her breath sweeping his face.

Then there came a pressure against his breast, a gentle resistance of Marion's half conscious form, and when she had awakened from her partial swoon he was holding her in the crook of his arm.

It had all passed quickly, the girl had rested against him only so long as he might have held half a dozen breaths and yet there had been all of a lifetime in it for Nathaniel Plum, a cycle of joy that he knew would remain with him for ever.

But there was something bitter-sweet in the thought that she was conscious of what he had done, something of humiliation as well as gladness, and still not enough of the first to make him regret that he had kissed her, that he had kissed her mouth and her eyes.

He loved her, and he was glad that in those passing moments he had betrayed himself.