tious. Indeed, I was no longer
worth a man's enmity. Sympathy was now the only indignity that could be
put upon me. And Anderson did not trespass in that direction. My misery
was, I thought, complete. One note must still be struck in that long
discord of despair.

We were steaming along the southern coast of Java. For many hours the
rugged cliffs and giant rocks which fence the island against the
onslaught of the Indian Ocean had passed before us as in review, and
we--Edith Metford and I--sat on the deck silently, with many thoughts in
common, but without the interchange of a spoken word. The stern,
forbidding aspect of that iron coast increased the gloom which had
settled on my brain. Its ramparts of lonely sea-drenched crags depressed
me below the mental zero that was now habitual with me. The sun went
down in a red glare, which moved me not. The short twilight passed
quickly, but I noticed nothing. Then night came. The restless sea
disappeared in darkness. The grand march past of the silent stars began.
But I neither knew nor cared.

A soft whisper stirred me.

"Arthur, for God's sake rouse yourself! You are brooding a great deal
too much. It will destroy you."

Listlessly I put my hand in hers, and clasped her fingers gently.

"Bear with me!" I pleaded.

"I will bear with you for ever. But you must fight on. You have not won
yet."

"No, nor ever shall. I have fought my last fight. The victory may go to
whosoever desires it."

On this she wept. I could not bear that she should suffer from my
misery, and so, guarding carefully her injured arm, I drew her close to
me. And then, out of the darkness of the night, far over the solitude of
the sea, there came to us the sound of a voice. That voice was a woman's
wail. The girl beside me shuddered and drew back. I did not ask her if
she had heard. I knew she had heard.

We arose and stood apart without any explanation. From that moment a
caress would have been a sacrilege. I did not hear that weird sound
again, nor aught else for an hour or more save the bursting of the
breakers on the crags of Java.

I kept no record of the commonplaces of our voyage thereafter. It only
remains for me to say that I arrived in England broken in health and
bankrupt in fortune. Brande left no money. His formula for the
transmutation of metals is unintelligible to me. I can make no use of
it.

Edith Metford remains my friend. To part utterly after what we have
undergone together