ious, Nona?"

She said swiftly, as though she were stirred, "Oh, Marko, yes, that's
mysterious. Do you know sometimes I've seen drift like that, and I've
felt--oh, I don't know. But I've put out a stick and drawn in a piece of
wood just as the stuff was moving off, just to save it being carried
away into--well, into that, you know."

"Have you, Nona?"

She answered, "Do you think that's what life is, Marko?"

"It's not unlike," he said. And he added, "Except about some one coming
along with a stick and drawing a bit into safety. I'm not so sure about
that. Perhaps that's what we're all looking for--"

He suddenly realised that he was back precisely at the thoughts his mind
had taken up on the morning he had met her. But with a degree more of
illumination. Two feelings came into his mind, the second hard upon the
other and overriding it, as a fierce horseman might catch and override
one pursued. He said, "It's rather jolly to have some one that can see
ideas like that." And then the overriding, and he said with astonishing
roughness, "But you--you aren't flotsam! How can you be flotsam--the
life you've--taken?"

And, lo, if he had struck her, and she been bound, defenceless, and with
her eyes entreating not to be struck again, she could not deeper have
entreated him than in the glance she fleeted from her eyes, the quiver
of her lids that first released, then veiled it.

It stopped his words. It caught his throat.

IV

He got up quickly. "I say, Nona, never mind about thinking. I'll tell
you what's been doing. Rotten. Happened just after I met you the other
day."

"The dust on these roads!" she said. She touched her eyes with her
handkerchief. "What, Marko?"

"Well, old Fortune promised to take me into partnership about an age
ago."

"Marko, he ought to have done it an age ago. What's there rotten about
that?" Her voice and her air were as gay as when she had entered.

"The rotten thing is that he's turned it down. At least practically has.
He--" He told her of the Twyning and Fortune incident. "Pretty rotten
of old Fortune, don't you think?"

"Old fiend!" said Nona. "Old trout!"

Sabre laughed. "Good word, trout. The men here all say he's like a
whale. They call him Jonah," and he told her why.

She laughed gaily. "Marko! How disgusting you are! But I'm sorry. I am.
Poor old Marko.... Of course it doesn't matter a horse-radish what an
old trout like that thinks about your work, but it does matter,