dy ye'll pardon me."

She blushed, and then ceased blushing because it was too dark for him to
perceive the blush, and she passed on without a word. When, across the
waste, she had come within sight of the yacht again, she heard footsteps
behind her, and turned to withstand the detective. But the overtaker was
Musa.

"It is necessary that I should return to the yacht," he said savagely. "The
thought of you and Monsieur Gilman together, without me.... No! I did not
know myself. ... I did not know myself.... It is impossible for me to
leave."

She made no answer. They boarded the yacht as though they had been for a
stroll. Few could have guessed that they had come back from the universe
terribly scathed. Accepting deferential greetings as a right, Musa
vanished rapidly to his cabin.

Several hours later Audrey and Mr. Gilman, alone among the passengers, were
standing together, both tarpaulined, on the starboard bow, gazing seaward
as the yacht cautiously felt her way down Mozewater. Captain Wyatt, and not
Mr. Gilman, was at the binnacle. A little rain was falling and the night
was rather thick but not impenetrable.

"There's the light!" said Audrey excitedly.

"What sharp eyes you have!" said Mr. Gilman. "I can see it, too." He spoke
a word to the skipper, and the skipper spoke, and then the engine went
still more slowly.

The yacht approached the Flank buoy dead slow, scarcely stemming the tide.
The Moze punt was tied up to the buoy, and Aguilar held a lantern on a
boathook, while Jane Foley, very wet, was doing a spell of baling. Aguilar
dropped the boathook and, casting off, brought the punt alongside the
yacht. The steps were lowered and Jane Foley, with laughing, rain-sprinkled
face, climbed up. Aguilar handed her bag which contained nearly everything
she possessed on earth. She and Audrey kissed calmly, and Audrey presented
Mr. Gilman to a suddenly shy Jane. In the punt Miss Foley had been seen to
take an affectionate leave of Aguilar. She now leaned over the rail.

"Good-bye!" she said, with warmth. "Thanks ever so much. It's been
splendid. I do hope you won't be too wet. Can you row all the way home?"
She shivered.

"I shall go back on the tide, Miss Foley," answered Aguilar.

He touched his cap to Audrey, mumbled gloomily a salutation, and loosed his
hold on the yacht; and at once the punt felt the tide and began to glide
away in the darkness towards Moze. The yacht's engine quickened. Flank buoy
fade