gue in his head I concluded I would leave him to his
mystery. To my surprise he followed me out of the station and kept by my
side, though I did not encourage him. I did not however repulse his
attempts at conversation. He was no longer expecting me, he said. He
had given me up. The weather had been uniformly fine--and so on. I
gathered also that the son of the poet had curtailed his stay somewhat
and gone back to his ship the day before.

That information touched me but little. Believing in heredity in
moderation I knew well how sea-life fashions a man outwardly and stamps
his soul with the mark of a certain prosaic fitness--because a sailor is
not an adventurer. I expressed no regret at missing Captain Anthony and
we proceeded in silence till, on approaching the holiday cottage, Fyne
suddenly and unexpectedly broke it by the hurried declaration that he
would go on with me a little farther.

"Go with you to your door," he mumbled and started forward to the little
gate where the shadowy figure of Mrs. Fyne hovered, clearly on the
lookout for him. She was alone. The children must have been already in
bed and I saw no attending girl-friend shadow near her vague but
unmistakable form, half-lost in the obscurity of the little garden.

I heard Fyne exclaim "Nothing" and then Mrs. Fyne's well-trained,
responsible voice uttered the words, "It's what I have said," with
incisive equanimity. By that time I had passed on, raising my hat.
Almost at once Fyne caught me up and slowed down to my strolling gait
which must have been infinitely irksome to his high pedestrian faculties.
I am sure that all his muscular person must have suffered from awful
physical boredom; but he did not attempt to charm it away by
conversation. He preserved a portentous and dreary silence. And I was
bored too. Suddenly I perceived the menace of even worse boredom. Yes!
He was so silent because he had something to tell me.

I became extremely frightened. But man, reckless animal, is so made that
in him curiosity, the paltriest curiosity, will overcome all terrors,
every disgust, and even despair itself. To my laconic invitation to come
in for a drink he answered by a deep, gravely accented: "Thanks, I will"
as though it were a response in church. His face as seen in the
lamplight gave me no clue to the character of the impending
communication; as indeed from the nature of things it couldn't do, its
normal expression being already that