n. She possessed the indefinable
property of charm. Such women, he knew, stirred life profoundly,
reanimating it with extraordinary efforts and desires. Their mere
passage, the pressure of their fingers, were more imperative than the
life service of others; the flutter of their breath could be more
tyrannical that the most poignant memories and vows.

John Woolfolk thought these things in a manner absolutely detached.
They touched him at no point. Nevertheless, the faint curiosity
stirred within him remained. The house unexpectedly inhabited behind
the ruined facade on the water, the magnetic woman with the echo of
apprehension in her cultivated voice, the parent, so easily disturbed,
even the mere name "Nicholas," all held a marked potentiality of
emotion; they were set in an almost hysterical key.

He was suddenly conscious of the odorous pressure of the flowering
trees, of the orange blossoms and the oleanders. It was stifling. He
felt that he must escape at once, from all the cloying and insidious
scents of the earth, to the open and sterile sea. The thick tangle in
the colorless light of the moon, the dimmer portico with its enigmatic
figure, were a cunning essence of the existence from which he had
fled. Life's traps were set with just such treacheries--perfume and
mystery and the veiled lure of sex.

He rose with an uncouth abruptness, a meager commonplace, and hurried
over the path to the beach, toward the refuge, the release, of the
_Gar_.

John Woolfolk woke at dawn. A thin, bluish light filled the cabin;
above, Halvard was washing the deck. The latter was vigorously
swabbing the cockpit when Woolfolk appeared, but he paused.

"Perhaps," the sailor said, "you will stay here for a day or two. I'd
like to unship the propeller, and there's the scraping. It's a good
anchorage."

"We're moving on south," Woolfolk replied, stating the determination
with which he had retired. Then the full sense of Halvard's words
penetrated his waking mind. The propeller, he knew, had not opened
properly for a week; and the anchorage was undoubtedly good. This was
the last place, before entering the Florida passes, for whatever minor
adjustments were necessary.

The matted shore, flushed with the rising sun, was starred with white
and deep pink blooms; a ray gilded the blank wall of the deserted
mansion. The scent of the orange blossoms was not so insistent as it
had been on the previous evening. The land appeared normal; i