but not now. No, no! Not
now!"

Ruth turned abruptly and walked toward the bungalow, mounted the
veranda steps, and vanished within. Without a word, without a sign,
Enschede started toward the beach, where his proa waited.

For a time Spurlock did not move. This incredible scene robbed him
of the sense of locomotion. But his glance roved, to the door
through which Ruth had gone, to Enschede's drooping back.
Unexpectedly he found himself speeding toward the father.

"Enschede!" he called.

Enschede halted. "Well?" he said, as Spurlock reached his side.

"Are you a human being, to leave her thus?"

"It is better so. You heard her. What she said is true."

"But why? In the name of God, why? Your flesh and blood! Have you
never loved anything?"

"Are you indeed my daughter's lawful husband?" Enschede countered.

"I am. You will find the proof in McClintock's safe. You called her
a wanton!"

"Because I had every reason to believe she was one. There was every
indication that she fled the island in company with a dissolute
rogue." Still the voice was without emotion; calm, colourless.

Fired with wrath, Spurlock recounted the Canton episode. "She
travelled alone; and she is the purest woman God ever permitted to
inhabit the earth. What!--you know so little of that child? She ran
away from _you_. Somebody tricked you back yonder--baited you for
spite. She ran away from you; and now I can easily understand why.
What sort of a human being are you, anyhow?"

Enschede gazed seaward. When he faced Spurlock, the granite was
cracked and rived; never had Spurlock seen such dumb agony in human
eyes. "What shall I say? Shall I tell you, or shall I leave you in
the dark--as I must always leave her? What shall I say except that
I am accursed of men? Yes; I have loved something--her mother. Not
wisely but too well. I loved her beyond anything in heaven or on
earth--to idolatry. God is a jealous God, and He turned upon me
relentlessly. I had consecrated my life to His Work; and I took the
primrose path."

"But a man may love his wife!" cried Spurlock, utterly bewildered.

"Not as I loved mine. So, one day, because God was wroth, her
mother ran away with a blackguard, and died in the gutter,
miserably. Perhaps I've been mad all these years; I don't know.
Perhaps I am still mad. But I vowed that Ruth should never suffer
the way I did--and do. For I still love her mother. So I undertook
to protect her by keeping love out of