at
them wistfully to try and find some tenderness; thinking forward, with
the picture of Joan's face before him and wondering what would come
into her eyes when he laid his heart bare for her gaze.

Waiting and waiting, on the steady rise and fall of his chest,--poor
little starved Tootles, poor little devil,--tears began to gather,
tears as hot as blood, and at last they broke and burst in an awful
torrent, and she flung herself face down upon the other bunk, crying
incoherently to God to let her die.

And once more the boy's spirit, wandering high in pure air, fell like
the stick of a rocket, and he sprang up and bent over the pitiful
little form,--not understanding because Joan held his heart and kept it
clean.

"Tootles," he cried out. "Dear old Tootles. What is it? What's
happened?"

But there was only brotherliness in his kind touch, only the same
solicitude that he had shown her all along. Nothing else. Not a thing.
And she knew it, at last, definitely. This boy was too different, too
much the other girl's--curse her for having all the luck.

For an instant, for one final desperate instant, she was urged to try
again, to fling aside control and restraint and with her trembling body
pressed close and her eager arms clasped about his neck, pour out her
love and make a passionate stammering plea for something,--just
something to put into her memory, her empty loveless memory,--but
suddenly, like the gleam of a lamp in a tunnel, her pride lit up, the
little streak of pride which had taken her unprofaned through all her
sordid life, and she sat up, choked back her sobs, and dried her face
with the skirt of her bathing dress.

"Don't mind me," she said. "It's the night or something. It got on my
nerves, I suppose, like--like the throb of an organ. I dunno. I'm all
right now, anyway." And she stood in front of him bravely, with her
chin up, but her heart breaking, and her attempt to make a laugh must
surely have been entered in the book of human courage.

But before Martin could say anything, she slipped into the cockpit,
balanced herself on the ledge of the cabin house, said "Good night, old
dear," and waved her hand, dived into the silver water and swam
strongly towards the beach.

XIII

It began to dawn upon Hosack that Joan had slipped away with Harry
Oldershaw from the fact that Palgrave first became restless and
irritable, then had a short sharp spat with Barclay about the length of
the line