gether."
He sat musing for a moment, staring with unseeing eyes at the pile
of work in front of him.

"Saidie, my Saidie! I shall never part from her; therefore I can
never part from my happiness." He smiled a little at the play on
the words, and then commenced his day's labours.

That evening, when he returned, Saidie noticed at once the
depression in his usually gay, bright manner. When they were alone
at dinner she laid her hand on his.

"What has darkened the light of my lord's countenance?" she asked
softly.

Hamilton drew from his pocket his wife's letter, and laid it beside
her plate.

"Can you read that, Saidie? If so, you will know all about it."

The girl leaned one elbow on the table and bent over the letter,
studying it. She had been trying hard to improve herself in the
language, of which she knew already something, and with Oriental
quickness, had acquired much in the past three months. She made out
the sense now easily enough.

"This lady is a wife of yours?" she said quickly, with a swift
upward glance at him, when she had finished reading the letter.

Hamilton laughed a little.

"She was my wife till I saw you, Saidie. No one is my wife now, nor
ever will be, but you."

A soft glow of supreme pleasure and pride lighted up Saidie's great
lustrous eyes. She bent her head and put her soft lips to his
hand.

"Have you forbidden this wife to come to you?" she asked after a
minute.

"Yes, I have; but she will come all the same. English wives think
it foolish to obey their husbands."

He laughed sardonically, and Saidie looked bewildered and
horrified.

* * * * *

A month later, a long, lean woman sat in a deck chair on board an
Indian liner as it crossed the enchanted waters of the Indian
Ocean. Enchanted, for surely it is some magician's touch that makes
these waters such a rich and glorious blue! How they roll so
gently, full of majestic beauty, crested with sunlight, under the
ships they carry so lightly! How the gold light leaps over them,
how the azure sky above laughs down to their tranquil mirror! how
the gleaming flying-fish rise in their glinting cloud, whirl over
them, and then softly disappear into their mysterious embrace!

The long, lean woman saw none of the magic round her. Her dull,
boiled-looking eyes gazed through the soft sunlight without seeing
it. In her lap lay a thin foreign letter and a telegram, together
with a copy of "Anna Lomb