at Elsa's point of view might be. The average woman would
have called him over-thrifty. All this noise over two shillings! But
to Elsa it was only the opening of another door into this strange man's
character. What others would have accepted as penuriousness she
recognized as a sense of well-balanced justice. Most men, she had
found, were afflicted with the vanity of spending, and permitted
themselves to be imposed on rather than have others think that money
meant anything to them. Arthur would have paid the difference at once
rather than have stood on the pier wrangling. As they waited for the
tender that was to convey them back to the ship, Elsa observed a
powerful middle-aged man, gray-haired, hawk-faced, steel-eyed, watching
her companion intently. Then his boring gaze traveled over her, from
her canvas-shoes to her helmet. There was something so baldly
appraising in the look that a flush of anger surged into her cheeks.
The man turned and said something to his companion, who shrugged and
smiled. Impatiently Elsa tugged at Warrington's sleeve.

"Who is that man over there by the railing?" she asked in a very low
voice. "He looks as if he knew you."

"Knew me?" Warrington echoed. The moment he had been dreading had
come. Some one who knew him! He turned his head slowly, and Elsa, who
had not dropped her hand, could feel the muscles of his arm stiffen
under the sleeve. He held the stranger's eye defiantly for a space.
The latter laughed insolently if silently. It was more for Elsa's sake
than for his own that Warrington allowed the other to stare him down.
Alone, he would have surrendered to the Berserk rage that urged him to
leap across the intervening space and annihilate the man, to crush him
with his bare hands until he screamed for the mercy he had always
denied others. The flame passed, leaving him as cold as ashes. "I
shall tell you who he is later; not here."

For the second time since that night on the Irrawaddy, Elsa recorded a
disagreeable sensation. It proved to be transitory, but at the time it
served to establish a stronger doubt in regard to her independence, so
justifiable in her own eyes. It might be insidiously leading her too
far away from the stepping-off place. The unspoken words in those
hateful eyes! The man knew Warrington, knew him perhaps as a
malefactor, and judged his associates accordingly. She thus readily
saw the place she occupied in the man's estimation. She e