on't want to answer it. I
simply surrender. He shall have his way with you--and with me. Only,"
he added in a gloomy lowered tone which struck Mr Powell as if a pedal
had been put down, "only it shall take a little time. I have never lied
to you. Never. I renounce not only my chance but my life. In a few
days, directly we get into port, the very moment we do, I, who have said
I could never let you go, I shall let you go."

To the innocent beholder Anthony seemed at this point to become
physically exhausted. My view is that the utter falseness of his, I may
say, aspirations, the vanity of grasping the empty air, had come to him
with an overwhelming force, leaving him disarmed before the other's mad
and sinister sincerity. As he had said himself he could not fight for
what he did not possess; he could not face such a thing as this for the
sake of his mere magnanimity. The normal alone can overcome the
abnormal. He could not even reproach that man over there. "I own
myself beaten," he said in a firmer tone. "You are free. I let you off
since I must."

Powell, the onlooker, affirms that at these incomprehensible words Mrs
Anthony stiffened into the very image of astonishment, with a frightened
stare and frozen lips. But next minute a cry came out from her heart,
not very loud but of a quality which made not only Captain Anthony (he
was not looking at her), not only him but also the more distant (and
equally unprepared) young man, catch their breath: "But I don't want to
be let off," she cried.

She was so still that one asked oneself whether the cry had come from
her. The restless shuffle behind Powell's back stopped short, the
intermittent shadowy chuckling ceased too. Young Powell, glancing
round, saw Mr Smith raise his head with his faded eyes very still,
puckered at the corners, like a man perceiving something coming at him
from a great distance. And Mrs Anthony's voice reached Powell's ears,
entreating and indignant.

"You can't cast me off like this, Roderick. I won't go away from you.
I won't--"

Powell turned about and discovered then that what Mr Smith was
puckering his eyes at, was the sight of his daughter clinging round
Captain Anthony's neck--a sight not in itself improper, but which had
the power to move young Powell with a bashfully profound emotion. It
was different from his emotion while spying at the revelations of the
skylight, but in this case too he felt the discomfort, if not