“I can’t make out that part of it at all,” said Verna. “I must think. He knew about that other snake-charming incident. I could see that. The question is—if he knew, how did he know? Some one must have seen it, and if they saw the one thing they’d have seen the other.”
“Yes; they must have. Verna, I have an instinct,” he went on somewhat gloomily, “a sure and certain instinct that this net will close round me. Everything in life looked too bright since I succeeded in ridding myself of this incubus, and, then I found you. After that everything was positively radiant. Of course it couldn’t last.”
“But it can last, and it shall. Dear one, you said just now that you were placing your life in my hands, and that precious life I shall guard with a jealous care. I have means of hearing things from outside which you would hardly believe, and shall set them working at once. No, it would take a great deal more to part us now—Do you remember the day we first met,” she broke off, “and they were talking of this very affair in the hotel? Well, I volunteered the remark that you had just come through the Makanya, but nobody heard. They were all talking at once, but I didn’t repeat it. Some instinct warned me not to.”
“Ah, that first day! We little thought what we were going to be to each other then.”
Verna shook her head. “I’m by no means so sure of that,” she said.
“No more am I, now I come to think of it.”
After this Denham threw off his depression as though by magic. As the days went by and no news came from outside, he was almost dazzled in the sunshine of happiness that flooded his heart. He had dreaded the effect of the revelation upon Verna, and now that he had made it, so far from her love for him lessening it had, if possible, deepened tenfold.
Then fell the bolt from the clear sky.