"

Ha! Massy. Again. The weariness of it crushed his heart--and the pain of
shame was almost more than he could bear without crying out.

"Well. Is it to be 'partner' still?"

"You don't know what you ask."

"I know what I want . . ."

Massy stepped in and closed the door.

". . . And I am going to have a try for it with you once more."

His whine was half persuasive, half menacing.

"For it's no manner of use to tell me that you are poor. You don't spend
anything on yourself, that's true enough; but there's another name for
that. You think you are going to have what you want out of me for three
years, and then cast me off without hearing what I think of you. You
think I would have submitted to your airs if I had known you had only a
beggarly five hundred pounds in the world. You ought to have told me."

"Perhaps," said Captain Whalley, bowing his head. "And yet it has saved
you." . . . Massy laughed scornfully. . . . "I have told you often
enough since."

"And I don't believe you now. When I think how I let you lord it over
my ship! Do you remember how you used to bullyrag me about my coat and
_your_ bridge? It was in his way. _His_ bridge! 'And I won't be a party
to this--and I couldn't think of doing that.' Honest man! And now it all
comes out. 'I am poor, and I can't. I have only this five hundred in the
world.'"

He contemplated the immobility of Captain Whalley, that seemed to
present an inconquerable obstacle in his path. His face took a mournful
cast.

"You are a hard man."

"Enough," said Captain Whalley, turning upon him. "You shall get nothing
from me, because I have nothing of mine to give away now."

"Tell that to the marines!"

Mr. Massy, going out, looked back once; then the door closed, and
Captain Whalley, alone, sat as still as before. He had nothing of his
own--even his past of honor, of truth, of just pride, was gone. All his
spotless life had fallen into the abyss. He had said his last good-by
to it. But what belonged to _her_, that he meant to save. Only a little
money. He would take it to her in his own hands--this last gift of a man
that had lasted too long. And an immense and fierce impulse, the very
passion of paternity, flamed up with all the unquenched vigor of his
worthless life in a desire to see her face.

Just across the deck Massy had gone straight to his cabin, struck a
light, and hunted up the note of the dreamed number whose figures had
flamed up also with the fie