reached out
and grasped it in his hands. He had looked for the love, the passion
that he could give in return; he had found only a cold-blooded
strategical move on the checkerboard of social aspirations. He was not
blind any more--nor angry. It was only a profound and bitter
loneliness that he knew. It would be a dreary thing, that
marriage--and dreary years. Once, when he had no right, he had forced
his kisses upon her; he had no more inclination now to force from her
what should be so freely offered--and was withheld!

Who cared for Jean Laparde? Not Myrna! He had bought her as he had
sworn he would buy her, and his own words had come true--with fame. He
was the great Laparde! But who cared for _Jean_ Laparde? None that he
knew now! All that was in the past; all that was in the little village
on the Mediterranean shore in the days when he had made the clay
_poupees_ on the banks of the creek, and dreamed of that wondrous dream
statue that had been so real a thing to him--and now even that was
gone--and he was alone.

Ah, they were back again, those scenes of Bernay-sur-Mer! Whose face
was that? Gaston Bernier! Old Gaston! And what was this that he was
living again, that was so cruel in its realism? That night on the
Perigeau ... that night when old Gaston died ... that day when he had
made the beacon for Marie-Louise, the beacon with its arms outstretched
that--he covered his face suddenly with his hands. If he could only
strangle these thoughts--God, the loneliness and the pain they brought!

How the strains of that waltz seemed to sob out like some
broken-hearted, lost and wandering thing! He shivered a little. How
cold the night was, how wet and damp! How the engines throbbed,
throbbed, throbbed, and seemed to catch the tempo of the distant music,
and like muffled drums beat time to it as to a dirge!

His hands dropped to his sides. From far down the deck came Myrna's
rippling, silvery peal of laughter; and, through the group around her,
he caught the sparkle of the magnificent diamond necklace at her
throat, the white, fluffy wrap of fur thrown across her shoulders--and
heard her laugh again. And at her laugh, he turned bitterly around to
the rail to face the night as the ship drove into it, to let the wind
and the wet mist blow into his face, to look down on the steerage deck
below him. What a contrast! There, just beneath where he stood, in
the filmy light that shone out from an open