"Darling, there is no need to tell me. I know." And I put my hand round her soft column of throat, feeling all its quick pulses throbbing hard into the palm of my hand.
"Put your head down on my heart, Treevor. Lie down beside me; now let us think we have drunk a little opium, just a little, and we are going to sleep through a long night together. Hush! What is that? Did you hear anything?"
She lifted my hand from her throat and sat up, listening.
I had not heard anything. I had been too absorbed. All had vanished now from me, except the fervent beauty of the girl before me.
The sea of desire had closed over my head, sealing the senses to outside things; I drew her towards me impatiently.
"It is nothing," I murmured. "I heard nothing." But she sat up, gazing straight across a small cleared space in front of us to where the impenetrable thicket of undergrowth again stood forward like grey screens between the twisted tree trunks.
"Yes, there was something; there, opposite! Look, something is moving!" I followed her eyes and saw a strand of loose moss quiver and heard a twig break in the quiet round us. We both watched the undergrowth across the open space intently. For a second nothing moved, then the boughs parted in front of us, and through the great lichen streamers and rugged bands of grey-green moss depending from them, peered an old, drawn-looking face.
Suzee gave a piercing shriek of dismay, and started to her feet.
I sprang to my feet, and my right hand went to my hip pocket. The head pushed through the thicket, and a bent and aged form followed slowly. I drew out my revolver, but the figure of the old man straightened itself up and he waved his hand impatiently, as if deprecating violence.
"Sir, I have come after my wife," he said, in a low, broken tone.
I slipped the weapon back in my pocket. I had had an idea that he might attack Suzee, but voice and face showed he was in a different mood.
Suzee clung to my hand on her knees, crying and trembling.
"Go and sit over there," he said peremptorily to her, pointing to the other side of the glade, far enough from us to be out of hearing.
She did not move, only clung and shivered and wept as before.
"Do as he says," I whispered; "no harm can come to you while I am here."