wn in the closet. Lavender! She raised a fold
of the gown and breathed in rapturously that homy perfume. She sighed.
Perhaps she would have to lay away all her dreams in lavender.

A little later she sat before the dressing mirror, combing her hair. How
it happened she never could tell, but she heard a crash upon the wood
floor, and discovered her hand mirror shattered into a thousand
splinters.

Seven years' bad luck! She laughed. Fate had blundered. The mirror had
fallen seven years too late.

CHAPTER III

Outside the bar where the Whangpoo empties into the Yang-tse lay the
thousand-ton yacht _Wanderer II_, out of New York. She was a sea whippet,
and prior to the war her bowsprit had nosed into all the famed harbours of
the seven seas. For nearly three years she had been in the auxiliary fleet
of the United States Navy. She was still in war paint, owner's choice, but
all naval markings had been obliterated. Her deck was flush. The house,
pierced by the main companionway, was divided into three sections--a small
lounging room, a wireless room, and the captain's cabin, over which stood
the bridge and chart house. The single funnel rose between the captain's
cabin and the wireless room, and had the rakish tilt of the racer.
_Wanderer II_ could upon occasion hit it up round twenty-one knots, for
all her fifteen years. There was plenty of deck room fore and aft.

The crew's quarters were up in the forepeak. A passage-way divided the
cook's galley and the dry stores, then came the dining salon. The main
salon, with a fine library, came next. The port side of this salon was
cut off into the owner's cabin. The main companionway dropped into the
salon, a passage each side giving into the guest cabins. But rarely these
days were there any guests on _Wanderer II_.

The rain slashed her deck, drummed on the boat canvas, and blurred the
ports. The deck house shed webby sheets of water, now to port, now to
starboard. The ladder was down, and a reflector over the platform
advertised the fact that either the owner had gone into Shanghai or was
expecting a visitor.

All about were rocking lights, yellow and green and red, from warships,
tramps, passenger ships, freighters, barges, junks. The water was streaked
with shaking lances of colour.

In the salon, under a reading lamp, sat a man whose iron-gray hair was
patched with cowlicks. Combs and brushes produced no results, so the owner
had had it clipped to a short pom