_"Come back to Erin, mavourneen, mavourneen,
Come back, aroon, to the land of your birth."_

As well as I could, for the mist in my eyes was blinding me, I watched
the steamer until she slid behind the headland of the bay, round, the
revolving light that stands on the point of it--stretching my neck
through the window of the car, while the fresh wind from the sea smote
my hot face and the salt air licked my parched lips. And then I fell
back in my seat and cried for sheer joy of the love that was shown to
Martin.

The crowd was returning down the pier by this time, like a black river
running in the darkness and rumbling over rugged stones, and I heard
their voices as they passed the car.

One voice--a female voice--said:

"Well, what do you think of _our_ Martin Conrad?"

And then another voice--a male voice--answered:

"By God he's a Man!"

Within a few minutes the pier was deserted, and the chauffeur was
saying:

"Home, my lady?"

"Home," I answered.

Seeing Martin off had been too much like watching the lifeboat on a dark
and stormy night, when the lights dip behind a monstrous wave and for
some breathless moments you fear they will never rise.

But as we drove up the head I caught the lights of the steamer again now
far out at sea, and well I knew that as surely as my Martin was there he
was thinking of me and looking back towards the house in which he had
left me behind him.

When we reached the Castle I found to my surprise that every window was
ablaze.

The thrum of the automobile brought Price into the hall. She told me
that the yachting party had come back, and were now in their bedrooms
dressing for dinner.

As I went upstairs to my own apartments I heard trills of laughter from
behind several of the closed doors, mingled with the muffled humming of
various music-hall ditties.

And then suddenly a new spirit seemed to take possession of me, and I
knew that I had become another woman.

MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD

My darling was right. For a long hour after leaving Blackwater I
continued to stand on the captain's bridge, looking back at the lighted
windows of the house above Port Raa, and asking myself the question
which for sixteen months thereafter was to haunt me day and night--Why
had I left her behind me?

In spite of all her importunities, all her sweet unselfish thought of my
own aims and interests, all her confidence in herself, all her brave
determination to share