ack into deeper shadow. There was horrible stillness. She
stood transfixed, chilling, as Lot's wife must have stood when crystal
after crystal replaced the warm and buoyant rivulets of being.

"Elsie--I may call you that just once--you must not refuse. If you do,
you will be without any friendship but mine--and my friendship would be
worse than deadliest enmity. The reason you must have guessed. It has
kept me tongue-tied till now--a coward, a blackguard, some might say.
The reason is because"--his voice blurred hoarsely through a strangled
sob--"because I am married already."

A convulsive gasp from her--scarcely audible--no word.

He clutched at a rail and resumed almost grimly, cauterising his gaping
wound with reality's searing iron,

"My wife is in a sanatorium, mentally deranged. A virtuous woman, but
she was wedded to mysticism and morphia, and loved me never a bit."

The fall of pitiful tears, tears from the sweet blue of her guileless
eyes, came hissing against the red-hot cicatrice. His strength almost
failed. Such innocence, such loneliness needed protection. But his! This
man who had brought down wild beasts in the open, found deadlier tussle
in the confines of his brain. He quavered--his firm jaws clenched.
Reason is muscular, but nature is subtle and crafty. With a jerk, a
twist, reason is overthrown, but it takes time and heart's blood to
stretch nature prone and panting.

When he next spoke his voice was hard--uneven.

"Elsie, for God's sake help me! Don't cry, or I must open my arms and
hold you in them for ever, come what may. We have needed no words to
translate love's language in--no signs to show we were each to each the
complement that Heaven has made and laws of men have marred; we shall
need no oath to bind us to remembrance. Good-bye. Some day, when you are
older, you may know what it costs a fellow to protect a woman from her
greatest enemy--himself."

The sound smote her heart, harsh and grating, like rusty steel. She
could not scan the ashen mask that hid the rage of conflict; merciful
darkness had enveloped the death struggle with a gossamer pall. There
was not even a clasp of hands to tell his going; she knew it, but still
stood there, as the vessel glided on into the sweltering night's
maturity over a placid sea, under a placid sky, while human passions
raged and rent themselves in useless agony.

* * * * *

Two hours later all was silent; most of