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reason I was insulting to you—my disgusting moodiness; but the other half is the reason I made a vow to tell it. You see something—something has had a great effect on me during this African journey. I realized that when we got fairly deep down into the Desert—at Touggourt."

"I think I understand what you mean," he said gravely. "Nobody'd quite understand the effect of Africa who hadn't been here, and I suppose a great many who have been here wouldn't understand. I've just begun to feel the Desert myself—I don't know what change it might make in me; but other parts of Africa have been sufficiently effective."

"It wasn't the Desert that made a change in me, Mr. Ogle," she said. "I realized it at Touggourt and in the Desert; but what made the change"—she hesitated, and a ripple of laughter in her voice was a sound not of mirth, but of embarrassment—"well, I think places only help us to realize things in ourselves; they don't make them happen. What made the change in me wasn't a place at all, but a person. It was—it was you!"

"I!" he cried. "I made a——"

"Yes, I think so," she said. "You see I belong to