pictures of the gray life to which his
desertion had condemned her ... the gradually crushing tyranny of
weakness ... the final surrender. It had been a surrender after years of
siege, not because her courage had failed, but because she had waited in
vain for the reinforcement of his loyalty. This was what he had done
with his life and hers. For him there was an empty future: for her
marriage with a coldly selfish sensualist who called his greed piety.
Stuart Farquaharson sat in a chilled inertia of despair while the ship's
bells recorded the passing of hours. From the decks above drifted little
fragments of human talk and human laughter, but to him they were
meaningless. Late in the evening he rose with an effort and went on deck
where he sought out an unoccupied place. Phosphorescent gleams broke
luminously in the wake. Clusters of great stars and the bright dust of
star-spray sprinkled the sky, but whether he looked up or down Stuart
Farquaharson could see only the light of victorious surrender in the
eyes of the woman he loved, declaring her love for him. Now she was in
the arms of another man--a man who had cunningly and patiently
subordinated every lesser thing to his determination of possessing her.

The voice of impulse pleaded with him fiercely to go back and tax that
man, panoplied though he was in the sanction of society and the church,
with having won foully. Tollman would never kindle the fire that burned
deep and blue-flamed in his wife's nature. Her life with him would be
thirst and hunger. But Stuart's fever turned to chill again as he
remembered. He had forfeited his rights and stood foresworn. His vows
had been brave and his performance craven. He acknowledged with
self-scorn that his eagerness to break through Tollman's force of
possession went back to a motive more selfish than exalted. He was
driven by a personal craving to hold another man's wife in his arms. He
was tempted by the sense of insurmountable power which he knew he held
upon her thoughts, her love and her imagination.

This must be the persuasiveness of some devil's advocate which whispered
to him: "Go now! Despite all her stern allegiance to duty you can make
her come into your arms. This marriage is all a hideous mistake. The
bigots have trapped her with a bait of false martyrdom. Go while she is
still sickened with the first bitterness of this profanation of youth in
the custody of age." Then into this hot-blooded counsel crept the o