dom."

"But I was intoxicated!"

"So was the man you just fought in this room. There is no hidden
beast in you, Hoddy. I could not love you else."

"They may find me."

"Well, if they send you to prison, I'll be outside when they let
you go."

He took her face between his hands and kissed her on the lips. "I'm
not worth it. You are all that I am or hope to be--the celestial
atom God put into me at the beginning. Now He has taken that out
and given it form and beauty--you!"

"Wonderful hand!" Ruth seized his right hand and kissed it. "All
the wonderful things it is going to do! If I could only know for
certain that my mother knew how happy I'm going to be!"

"You love the memory of your mother?"

"It is a part of my blood ... my beautiful mother!"

He saw Enschede, putting out to sea, alone, memories and regrets
crowding upon his wake. Her father was right: Ruth must never know.
The mother was far more real to her than the father; the ghostly
far more substantial than the living form. So long as he lived,
Spurlock knew that in fancy he would be reconstructing that scene
between himself and Ruth's father.

Their heads touched again, their arms tightened. Gazing into each
other's eyes with new-found rapture, neither observed the sudden
appearance in the doorway of an elderly woman in travel-stained
linen.

There was granite in her face and agate in her eyes. The lips were
straight and pale, the chin aggressive, the nose indomitable. She
was, by certain signs, charged with anger, but she saw upon the
faces of these two young fools the look of angels and an ineffable
kindness breathed upon her withered heart.

"So, you young fool, I have found you!" she said, harshly.

Ruth and Spurlock separated, the one embarrassed, the other utterly
dumfounded.

"Auntie?" he cried.

"Yes, Auntie! And to date you have cost me precisely sixteen
thousand dollars--hard earned, every one of them."

Spurlock wondered if something hadn't suddenly gone awry in his
head. He had just passed through a terrific physical test. Surely
he was imagining this picture. His aunt, here at McClintock's? It
was unbelievable. He righted a chair and sat in it, his face in his
hands. But when he looked again, there she was!

"I don't understand," he said, finally.

"You will before I'm done with you. I have come to take you home;
and hereafter my word will be the law. You will obey me out of
common decency. You can scribble if you want t