e sky but the broad moon, and hardly a ripple to
break the path of light she made in the quiet water. Mine was the middle
watch that night. You came on deck, and found me alone--"

He stopped. Crayford took his hand, and finished the sentence for him.

"Alone--and in tears."

"The last I shall ever shed," Wardour added, bitterly.

"Don't say that! There are times when a man is to be pitied indeed, if
he can shed no tears. Go on, Richard."

Wardour proceeded--still following the old recollections, still
preserving his gentler tones.

"I should have quarreled with any other man who had surprised me at that
moment," he said. "There was something, I suppose, in your voice when
you asked my pardon for disturbing me, that softened my heart. I told
you I had met with a disappointment which had broken me for life. There
was no need to explain further. The only hopeless wretchedness in this
world is the wretchedness that women cause."

"And the only unalloyed happiness," said Crayford, "the happiness that
women bring."

"That may be your experience of them," Wardour answered; "mine is
different. All the devotion, the patience, the humility, the worship
that there is in man, I laid at the feet of a woman. She accepted
the offering as women do--accepted it, easily, gracefully,
unfeelingly--accepted it as a matter of course. I left England to win
a high place in my profession, before I dared to win _her_. I braved
danger, and faced death. I staked my life in the fever swamps of Africa,
to gain the promotion that I only desired for her sake--and gained it. I
came back to give her all, and to ask nothing in return, but to rest my
weary heart in the sunshine of her smile. And her own lips--the lips I
had kissed at parting--told me that another man had robbed me of her. I
spoke but few words when I heard that confession, and left her forever.
'The time may come,' I told her, 'when I shall forgive _you_. But the
man who has robbed me of you shall rue the day when you and he first
met.' Don't ask me who he was! I have yet to discover him. The treachery
had been kept secret; nobody could tell me where to find him; nobody
could tell me who he was. What did it matter? When I had lived out the
first agony, I could rely on myself--I could be patient, and bide my
time."

"Your time? What time?"

"The time when I and that man shall meet face to face. I knew it then; I
know it now--it was written on my heart then, it is written on my