he lose the broader love--in missing the love of one?

The answer lay dark in his consciousness. Ways to bring happiness to
women had come to him, but to carry them out now was mere obedience to
the old galvanism. He faced this realization with deadly shame....

"_You will learn to look within for the woman_." And what was left
within? In a kind of desperation, Bedient turned to this inventory. The
old faith of the soul in God, in the Son, and in the Blessed
Mother-Spirit still stood, apart and above the wreckage, unassailed.
This was Light.

In these furious days of disintegration Bedient's soul-faith was not
brought to test. A woman's might have fallen with her love.... But the
mighty passionate being, that was roused to commanding actions in that
high sunlit hour, died slowly and with agonies untellable.

The _Hatteras_ steamed out of the gale, as she had done out of many
another, in the same riotous stretch of sea-water. Bedient had become
known aboard from his association with Captain Carreras. It was during
the first dinner of the voyage that certain interesting information
transpired from the conversation of Captain Bloom.

"Insurrection was smoking down there when we left ten days ago. We
expected to hear in New York that the shooting had begun. Celestino Rey
very nearly got a body-blow over, while we were hung up in port before
the last trip up. Jaffier, the old Dictator, had just stepped out of
his dingy little capitol, when a rifle-ball tore through his sleeve,
between his arm and ribs. His sentries clubbed the rifle-man to death
in the street----"

"It's rather a peculiar situation as I understand it," Bedient said.
"The death of either leader----"

"Would mean an end to his party. That's it exactly," said Captain
Bloom.

A lively listener to this talk at the Captain's table was a dark-haired
young woman with dancing brown eyes--Miss Adith Mallory. She was
slender, and not tall, but spirited in manner; exhibited a fine freedom
with her new acquaintances at the table, mostly gentlemen, but with an
elegance which repelled familiarity. Miss Mallory seemed to find great
fun in these revolutionary affairs, and a deep interest in Andrew
Bedient, and his vast holdings on the Island. Her eyes quickly recalled
to Bedient's mind a line of Tennyson's--"_Sunset and evening star, and
after that the dark_."

He saw very little of her until the _Hatteras_ emerged into the warm,
blue Caribbean, and he no longer h