ith such intense, even violent bitterness that Merefleet was
utterly astonished. He stood gravely contemplating her flushed, upturned
face.

"What has he done to make you say that, I wonder?" he said.

"Nothing to me," she answered quickly. "Nothing at all to me. But I used
to know his first wife. She was a sort of friend of mine. They used to
call her the loveliest woman in U.S., Mr. Merefleet. And she belonged to
that fiend."

They began to walk towards the boats through the shifting shingle.
Merefleet had nothing to say. There was something in her passionate
speech that disturbed him vaguely. She spoke as one whose most sacred
personal interests had once been at stake.

"Lucky for her she's dead, Big Bear," she said presently, with a
side-glance at him. "I've never regretted any of my friends less than
Mrs. Ralph Warrender. Oh, she was real miserable. I've seen her with
diamonds piled high in her hair and her face all shining with smiles. And
I've known all the time that her heart was broken. And when I heard that
she was dead, do you know, I was glad--yes, thankful. And I guess
Warrender wasn't sorry. For she hated him."

"I never cared for Warrender," said Merefleet. "But I always took him for
a gentleman."

She laughed at his words with a gaiety that jarred upon him. "Do you
know, Big Bear," she said, "I think they must have forgotten to teach
you your ABC when you went to school? You're such an innocent."

Merefleet tramped by her side in silence. There was something in him that
shrank when she spoke in this vein.

But quite suddenly her tone changed. She spoke very gently. "Still, it's
better to know too little than too much," she said. "And oh, Big Bear, I
know such a lot."

Merefleet looked at her sharply and surprised an expression on her face
which he did not easily forget.

He knew in that moment that this woman had suffered, and his heart gave
a wild, tumultuous throb. From that moment he also knew that she had
taken his heart by storm.

CHAPTER XI

Half-an-hour later they were out on the open sea beyond the harbour in a
cockleshell even frailer than Quiller's little craft which they had not
been able to secure.

The sea was very quiet, only broken by an occasional long swell that
drove them southward like driftwood. Merefleet, who had been persuaded
to quit the harbour against his better judgment, was not greatly
disturbed by this fact. He did not anticipate any difficulty in
ret