The Lost Valley. J. M. Walsh

was flung wide open. The girl stood in her own light so that the shadows masked her face, but the sun fell full on mine and my features must have been clearly visible to her.

      "You!" she said, with a little catch in her voice.

      "Shut the door, please," I said, in the most matter-of-fact tones I could muster. "Shut the door and come out here."

      I knew her now. God! Could I ever forget her? In a flash my mind flew back through four years—or was it five?—to that evening when she had caused my little world to rock and tremble, and then to fall in pieces at my feet. I had loved her then—I thought I loved her more than anything or anyone in this world—but a dying father's wish had come between us. The poor old Dad had made a life study of the Islands—how monumental a study it was let his three volumes of Solomon Island Ethnology bear witness—yet he died before he had quite completed his notes. Though he had said nothing to me I knew the wish that lay nearest his heart, and I made his dying hour almost the happiest of his life by promising to carry on his work.

      I remember the night I came out to tell her. The sky was streaked with dead gold and cerise and warm-tinted clouds trailed across the heavens like the ends of a scarf streaming from the neck of a hurrying woman. All the world was gay that evening and I whistled as I went. She was waiting at the gate as always she had waited for me. She greeted me with a smile and some bright little remark that I forgot practically the instant it was uttered.

      "I want to talk to you," I said; "I want to talk seriously."

      She smiled up at me, a trusting little smile as I thought. She had no idea what was coming, but she always gave me my head in the things that do not matter much.

      "What is it, Jim?" she asked.

      "It's this," I said, and then I told what I had promised.

      "But that," she protested, "means burying yourself in New Guinea and the Solomons for four whole years."

      "It does," I said. "There is no other way."

      I had not been looking at her face—there had been no need, for I was quite convinced that she would see things in a proper light—but now I turned on her. To my surprise there was just the least little touch of annoyance in her face.

      "You don't quite relish the idea," I said.

      "It's a very foolish idea," she said quite frankly. "I don't know what you could have been thinking of."

      "I was thinking of my father," I told her. "I was making his last hour happy, and he died in the knowledge that I would carry his work on to the conclusion he had planned."

      "Are you going to see it through?" The abruptness of the question took me aback.

      "Of course," I said. "What else could I do?"

      "Four years!" she said. "What is to become of me?"

      "The time will soon go by," I answered, "and then I'll come back to you and everything will be right."

      "You seem to think of everyone but me," she said hotly. "You promised so that your father would die easy, and that's the end of it. If you are going to be bound by such a thing as that you're nothing more than an impractical idealist."

      "I passed my word and a Carstairs never breaks a promise."

      "You mean that, Jim? You mean that you are going away to … carry out that absurd promise?"

      "It's not absurd," I declared.

      "I think it is," she said wilfully. "If you go, you need never come back."

      "I am going," I said steadily. "As an honorable man there is no other course open to me. I'm sorry that you look at it this way, but I can't do anything else."

      "At last I know how much you think of me," she said with that little touch of anger with which a woman always defends the indefensible. "You never did care for me."

      "I do, I do," I protested. "Can't you see it?"

      "I can't see anything," she said stubbornly, "except that you'd do this rather than listen to me. It shows all you think of me. Oh, I hate you! I never, never want to see you again!"

      "Is that your last word?" I demanded.

      "Absolutely my last," she answered firmly.

      "Well," I said, "here's my last too. I'm going to carry out my promise, and if a man had spoken to me about it as you have spoken to me to-night I would have pulped his face."

      "I really believe you would," she said exasperatingly. "You see, Jim, you were always something of a savage. That, I suppose, is why you are so anxious to go to the Islands … where the savages are."

      That was the very last word she had said to me, for the next moment the gate was banged behind her and shut me out of her life. I was hurt, badly hurt in my self-esteem, but my rising anger, burning hot within me, kept me from feeling as bad as I might have felt. In two months' time I landed at Tulagi on Florida Island, and for the next four years or so the civilised world knew me not. I reached finality, but I spent my fortune and came back to Australia to all intents and purposes a pauper. Four years … ! Here she was facing me at last—just as if nothing had ever come between us.

      "Yes, it's me," I said ungrammatically. "Why?"

      She raised her hand to her throat with a queer little gesture. "I didn't quite expect to see you … yet," she said.

      "It's the unexpected that happens," I remarked. "I've come back at last, though in slightly different circumstances."

      "I know, Jim. I've heard."

      "He told you," I suggested, and nodded towards the door she had just closed.

      "How do you know that?" she asked quickly.

      "It is my business to know things," I told her. "I'm a professional caretaker of secrets now."

      She looked at me blankly and I saw that he had not told her everything. It behoved me to play the game warily until I was sure of my ground.

      "What are you doing here, Moira?" I asked her point-blank.

      "That's a question I could ask you," she countered. "But I am here, not from any desire to meet you—I didn't know you were here—but because he sent for me."

      "And why should he send for you?" I persisted.

      There was just the faintest flicker of a smile moving about her lips now; she had turned a little and the light was playing on her face.

      "For just the simplest reason in the world. He wanted me."

      "Why should he want you?" I demanded.

      She looked at me a moment as if astonished that I should ask such a question. But there was that in my eyes which told her that my ignorance was anything but assumed.

      "You really mean to say you don't know?" she asked incredulously.

      "If I did know I wouldn't question you about it," I said shortly. "What is the reason?"

      "Well, you see," she answered lightly, with just a slight uplift of her eyebrows—an old theatrical trick that I used to admire in the days gone by—"he happens to be my uncle."

      "That puts another complexion on matters," I said half to myself. But her quick ear caught the drift of my remark and she was down on me like the wolf on the fold.

      "You're in with him, are you?" she questioned, with that devouring flame I knew so well flaring up in her golden-brown eyes. "You're in with him … in this?"

      In a way I wasn't. As a matter-of-fact I suspected from her last words that she knew more about everything than I did, but I was perfectly sure that she wouldn't believe me if I denied it, so I said instead, "Yes, I am."

      "I might have known it," she said with a little shake of her head. I didn't quite follow her logic, but I judged it best to let it pass. One would think from the way she spoke that