the afternoon. I have never seen him since."

The man was looking at her, looking at her closely although he was
blinking all the time.

"What do you think became of him?" he asked. "What do people think?"

She shook her head.

"The only thing he cared to do was swim," she said. "His clothes and hat
were found down in the little cove near where we had a tent."

"You think, then, that he was drowned?" the man asked.

She nodded. Speech seemed to be becoming too painful.

"Drowning," her companion continued, helping himself to brandy, "is not
a pleasant death. Once I was nearly drowned myself. One struggles for a
short time and one thinks--yes, one thinks!" he added.

He raised his glass to his lips and set it down.

"It is an easy death, though," he went on, "quite an easy death. By the
way, were those clothes that were found of poor Wenham's identified as
the clothes he wore when he left the house?"

She shook her head.

"One could not say for certain," she answered. "I never noticed how he
was dressed. He wore nearly always the same sort of things, but he had
an endless variety."

"And this was seven months ago--seven months."

She assented.

"Poor Wenham," he murmured. "I suppose he is dead. What are you going to
do, Elizabeth?"

"I do not know," she replied. "Soon I must go to the lawyers and ask for
advice. I have very little more money left. I have written several times
to New York to you, to his friends, but I have had no answer. After all,
Jerry, I am his wife. No one liked my marrying him, but I am his wife.
I have a right to a share of his property if he is dead. If he has
deserted me, surely I shall be allowed something. I do not even know how
rich he was."

The man at her side smiled.

"Much better off than I ever was," he declared. "But, Elizabeth!"

"Well?"

"There were rumors that, before you left New York, Wenham converted very
large sums of money into letters of credit and bonds, very large sums
indeed." She shook her head. "He had a letter of credit for about a
thousand pounds, I think," she said. "There is very little left of the
money he had with him."

"And you find living here expensive, I dare say?"

"Very expensive indeed," she agreed, with a sigh. "I have been looking
forward to seeing you, Jerry. I thought, perhaps, for the sake of old
times you might advise me."

"Of old times," he repeated to himself softly. "Elizabeth, do you think
of them sometimes?"

She was b