LITMIR.BIZ

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of flight, pelting abjectly on, with lips clenched and eyes that saw the world through a mist of pain and humiliation. Running still, she turned into the one street of Beira that still shows life in the hot hours, abandoning appearances and propriety now in her utter extremity. There was a footpath, at last, to relieve her from the terrible sand. Passers-by and people on verandas turned to stare and exclaim at her passage, but she kept on. The hotel in which she had a room was a shell of a house inclosing a courtyard at the back of the customs shed. She was running still as she turned in at the great gate, threaded her way through the little marble-topped tables in the courtyard, and climbed the stairs to the wooden balcony from which her room opened. With the last of her strength she bolted and locked the door and stumbled to her bed.

      It was an hour before she was able to rise and cool her smarting face with brackish water. There was a need to review her position. She sat in the half-darkness of the bare little room and tried to think, staring hopelessly at its stained walls and cheap, heat-warped furniture. She had no need to count her money; she knew to a penny how she stood in that regard. There was enough for her bill, and a little over, if she could get away at once, and that was the best that could be made of it. The lady in Rhodesia, who had imported her a year ago to serve her as a paid companion, had paid her bare fare home; the rest was what remained out of her exiguous wages. Mrs. Colby—that was the lady's name—had made a point of buying her a first-class ticket.

      "I am disappointed in you," she had said. "You seem to me to be nothing more than a child; but I will send you home first-class."

      And this was the result of it. She had come down to Beira to wait for the boat; and the man, the terror from which she had run through the deadly sunlight, had spoken to her even as she was getting out of the train. He had haunted her ever since; his whispers defiled her loneliness; it was not the first time he had laid hands on her. In all that arid little town, glowing on its spit of sand like a hectic between the mangrove swamps and the shallow bay, there was not a soul to raise a hand for her, not one that she could call upon to aid and defend her.

      There came a knock on her door, and a sound of feet that shuffled. She started upright.

      "Who is it?" she demanded through the closed door.

      "It is a note," came the answer in a flat, guttural voice.

      Miss Fraser unlocked the door and looked out. It was the manager of the little hotel, slippered and in his shirt-sleeves. He knew that Miss Fraser could not leave on the mail-boat, and was presenting his bill without delay. She took the envelop from his brown hand.

      "Veekly settlement," he said. "Eet is de rule."

      Miss Fraser nodded mechanically. "I shall come down at dinner-time," she said. "I will pay then."

      It hardly troubled her at all to find the bill larger than it should have been, with cunning items not to be foreseen or avoided by the economical guest. She could pay it, and there would still be a little money left; but, sooner or later, she must be turned out. That was the broad fact in her consciousness which overwhelmed all lesser troubles—that and the indefatigable man who pursued her. The contemplation of it filled the rest of her afternoon; she was still empty of all resource when the shrill bell tinkled in the courtyard, announcing the hour of dinner. It startled her with a heavy sense of the passing of time; in a few hours more, if she should venture to go out again, she would be able to watch the lights of the big mail-boat moving down to the mouth of the harbour, carrying out of reach all that life held for Margaret Fraser,

      She paid her bill in the little office at the side of the great gate of the courtyard, where the manager sat, under a yellow lamp, at the heart of a strange disorder of papers, old clothes, cases of liquor, and the like. She had herself under command again; she was grave and composed to his shrewd glances as he took her money and achieved the production of a receipt.

      "You vill stay longer?" he inquired, as he took her money.

      "For the present," she replied.

      He had it in mind to require her to pay in advance, but decided that it was not yet necessary. From his seat under the lamp, he had seen very many insolvent guests endeavouring to carry off their condition with a brave front, and he was something of a connoisseur in impecuniousness. Miss Fraser showed none of the signs he was accustomed to recognize. The penniless, in his experience, might be aggressive or conciliatory, buoyantly cheerful or moist and resigned; but they always talked a little too much, whereas this girl did not talk at all. He hoisted himself half out of his chair, in a convention of politeness, to hand her the receipted bill across the top of his desk. She took it and went to dinner.

      Her place was at a table near the centre of the courtyard, close to where a water-pipe dribbled and gurgled through a heap of stones and answered to the title of "fountain." By this time she found herself tired; a great weariness oppressed her; and it was with hardly a thrill that she saw the man who followed her come in at the gate and bear straight down on her table. There were one or two other people about; she was aware of their presence without noticing them individually, but the fact that they were there saved her from the need of seeking refuge in her room and going without her dinner. She bent over her plate as he paused at the other side of the table.

      "Well," he was saying, "you had a run, did n't you? How are you feelin' after it?"

      He drew out a chair and seated himself opposite to her, leaning forward with both elbows on the table. It was a narrow table, and his attitude forced her to sit back. The hunted feeling returned to her, and all her shrinking fear at the sight of his lean, broken face, stamped with the unmistakable signs of drink, idleness, and bestiality. The smile upon it deepened its horror; it had a quality of relish, of cold glee.

      "If you don't go away ——" she began, and put her hands on the table in the action of rising from her chair.

      "Yes?" he inquired. "Yes? If I don't go away—what?"

      She sighed; it meant that she was to have no dinner. She gathered her belongings together, her purse, her gloves. He watched her with hot, narrow eyes.

      "You mean it?" he asked. "You're goin'? Just because I wanted to——"

      He stopped. From one of the tables under the veranda, where she had been sitting alone, an elderly lady had come toward them. She was standing at his side, stout, imperturbable, formidable. He stared up at her in amazement, and she looked down at him with the hard, cool face of one who is sure of herself.

      "Waiter!" she called, so suddenly that he jumped; and the waiter came running.

      "I will dine here," she announced, in a clear, deliberate voice. "Now! That is to say, if this young lady does not object."

      Miss Fraser glanced up timidly. "Not at all," she managed to answer, almost prayerfully. Her heart was beating tumultuously. After days of helplessness and suffering, here was the angel charged with deliverance. From the first moment, she had no doubt of it. The stranger was a gray-haired lady, short and thick-set. A flannel jacket, shaped like a man's, was loose on her broad shoulders; on her head, a felt hat added to the masculine character of her personality. She carried a large sun-umbrella as one carries a walking-stick; she was, altogether, a figure of some force. But Margaret Fraser looked past these items of accoutrement to the strong, confident face, the countenance of one in whom breeding has shaped character—the face, she told herself, of that most definite and finished thing, a "lady."

      The man licked his lips and cleared his throat.

      "I've taken this place," he said shortly.

      The strange lady continued to look at him for a space of moments. Her scrutiny had a tinge of curiosity, as if he were something new and unusual. Then——

      "Call the manager!" she ordered sharply.

      The waiter ran; he knew the tones of authority when he heard them. The other people sitting at tables looked on with gratitude for these diversions. Meanwhile she waited, still holding the man with an arrogant eye which had power to disconcert him mightily. He squirmed under it.

      "Ain't there places enough for you?" he began to whine. "Comin' here like this——"

      The

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