e as he took up his receiver.

"Manitowoc?" he said. "I want to know what you've heard from the
_Solwerk_.... You hear me? ... The men the _Solwerk_ picked up. You
have the names yet?"

"..."

"The _Benton_?"

"..."

"Oh, I understand! All from the _Benton_. I see! ... No; never mind
their names. How about Number 25? Nothing more heard from them?"

Constance had caught his shoulder while he was speaking and now clung
to it. Release--release of strain was going through him; she could
feel it, and she heard it in his tones and saw it in his eyes.

"The steamer Number 25 rammed proves to have been the _Benton_," he
told her. "The men are all from her. They had abandoned her in the
small boats, and the _Solwerk_ picked them up before the ferry found
her."

He was not asking her to congratulate him upon the relief he felt; he
had not so far forgotten himself as that. But it was plain to her that
he was congratulating himself; it had been fear that he was feeling
before--fear, she was beginning to understand, that those on the ferry
had been saved. She shrank a little away from him. Benjamin Corvet
had not been a friend of Henry's--they had quarreled; Uncle Benny had
caused trouble; but nothing which she had understood could explain fear
on Henry's part lest Uncle Benny should be found safe. Henry had not
welcomed Alan; but now Henry was hoping that Alan was dead. Henry's
words to her in the north, after Alan had seen her there, iterated
themselves to her: "I told that fellow Conrad not to keep stirring up
these matters about Ben Corvet.... Conrad doesn't know what he'll turn
up; I don't know either. But it's not going to be anything
pleasant...." Only a few minutes ago she had still thought of these
words as spoken only for Alan's sake and for Uncle Benny's; now she
could not think of them so. This fear of news from the north could not
be for their sake; it was for Henry's own. Had all the warnings been
for Henry's sake too?

Horror and amazement flowed in upon her with her realization of this in
the man she had promised to marry; and he seemed now to appreciate the
effect he was producing upon her. He tried obviously to pull himself
together; he could not do that fully; yet he managed a manner assertive
of his right over her.

"Connie," he cried to her, "Connie!"

She drew back from him as he approached her; she was not yet
consciously denying his right. What was controlling him, what