nice and snug for our four friends here.  You’ve laboured well and faithfully,” he said to the panting islanders, “and I’m going to reward you.  I’m going to set you free.  But not yet.  Don’t rejoice.  First, we shall tie you securely to four stout trees just off the road.  Then we’ll leave you to take a brief, much-needed rest.  Lady Deppingham, I fancy, can walk the rest of the way through the woods.  Just as soon as we are inside the walls, I’ll find some way to let your friends know that you are here.  You can explain the situation to them better than I can.  Tell ’em that it might have been worse.”

He and Selim promptly marched the bewildered islanders into the wood.  Bobby Browne, utterly exhausted, had thrown himself to the soft earth.  Lady Deppingham was standing, swaying but resolute, her gaze upon the distant, friendly windows.

At last she turned to look at her husband, timorously, an appeal in her eyes that the darkness hid.  He was staring at her, a stark figure in the night.  After a long, tense moment of indecision, she held out her hands and he sprang forward in time to catch her as she swayed toward him.  She was sobbing in his arms.  Bobby Browne’s heavy breathing ceased in that instant, and he closed his ears against the sound that came to them.

Deppingham gently implored her to sit down with him and rest.  Together they walked a few paces farther away from their companion and sat down by the roadside.  For many minutes no word was spoken; neither could whisper the words that were so hard in finding their way up from the depths.  At last she said: 

“I’ve made you unhappy.  I’ve been so foolish.  It has not been fun, either, my husband.  God knows it hasn’t.  You do not love me now.”

He did not answer her at once and she shivered fearfully in his arms.  Then he kissed her brow gently.

“I do love you, Agnes,” he said intensely.  “I will answer for my own love if you can answer for yours.  Are you the same Agnes that you were?  My Agnes?”

“Will you believe me?”

“Yes.”

“I could lie to you—­God knows I would lie to you.”

“I—­I would rather you lied to me than to—–­”

“I know.  Don’t say it.  George,” as she put her hands to his face and whispered in all the fierceness of a desperate longing to convince him, “I am the same Agnes.  I am your Agnes.  I am!  You do believe me?”

He crushed her close to his breast and then patted her shoulder as a father might have touched an erring child.

“That’s all I ask of you,” he said.  She lay still and almost breathless for a long time.

At last she spoke:  “It is not wholly his fault, George.  I was to blame.  I led him on.  You understand?”

“Poor devil!” said he drily.  “It’s a way you have, dear.”

The object of this gentle commiseration was staring with gloomy eyes at the lights below.  He was saying to himself, over and over again:  “If I can only make Drusie understand!”