THE COMING OF SERGEANT SMITH
"If you do not know now, you may never know," he said.
There was a silence which lasted for fully five minutes, and the crimson light upon the mountain top had paled to lemon yellow.
Then she asked again:
"Are you directly or indirectly guilty?"
He shook his head.
"Neither directly nor indirectly," he said shortly, and the next minute she was in his arms.
There had been no word of love between them, no tender passage, no letter which the world could not read. It was a love-making which had begun where other love-makings end—in conquest and in surrender. In this strange way, beyond all understanding, May Nuttall became engaged, and announced the fact in the briefest of letters to her friends.
A fortnight later the girl arrived in England, and was met at Charing Cross by Saul Arthur Mann. She was radiantly happy and
293
