" he said, "how could
you?" He was watching the young man's face with eyes full of sympathy
and concern. "How little you know him," he said, "how little you
understand. He will not do that," he added quickly, but looking
questioningly at Latimer and speaking in a tone almost of command. "He
will not undo all that he has done; I know him better than that." But
Latimer made no answer, and for a moment the two men stood watching
each other and questioning each other with their eyes. Then Latimer
turned, and without again so much as glancing at the girl walked
steadily to the door and left the room. He passed on slowly down the
stairs and out into the night, and paused upon the top of the steps
leading to the street. Below him lay the avenue with its double line
of lights stretching off in two long perspectives. The lamps of
hundreds of cabs and carriages flashed as they advanced toward him and
shone for a moment at the turnings of the cross-streets, and from
either side came the ceaseless rush and murmur, and over all hung the
strange mystery that covers a great city at night. Latimer's rooms lay
to the south, but he stood looking toward a spot to the north with a
reckless, harassed look in his face that had not been there for many
months. He stood so for a minute, and then gave a short shrug of
disgust at his momentary doubt and ran quickly down the steps. "No,"
he said, "if it were for a month, yes; but it is to be for many years,
many more long years." And turning his back resolutely to the north he
went slowly home.

ON THE FEVER SHIP

There were four rails around the ship's sides, the three lower ones of
iron and the one on top of wood, and as he looked between them from
the canvas cot he recognized them as the prison-bars which held him
in. Outside his prison lay a stretch of blinding blue water which
ended in a line of breakers and a yellow coast with ragged palms.
Beyond that again rose a range of mountain-peaks, and, stuck upon the
loftiest peak of all, a tiny block-house. It rested on the brow of the
mountain against the naked sky as impudently as a cracker-box set upon
the dome of a great cathedral.

As the transport rode on her anchor-chains, the iron bars around her
sides rose and sank and divided the landscape with parallel lines.
From his cot the officer followed this phenomenon with severe,
painstaking interest. Sometimes the wooden rail swept up to the very
block-house itself, and for a second