nd through blurred vision read what she had so happily
inscribed the night before. "Paul--I love you. Come to me. Elsa."
She had written it, unashamed.

She flung herself upon the bed, and there Martha found her.

"Elsa, child, what is it?" Martha cried, kneeling beside the bed.
"Child, what has happened?"

Elsa sat up, seized Martha by the shoulders and stared into the
faithful eyes.

"Do you want to know?"

"Elsa!"

"Well, I love this man Warrington and he loves me. But he has gone.
Can't you see? Don't you understand? Have you been as blind as I? He
is Paul Ellison, Arthur's brother, his twin brother. And they
obliterated him. It is Arthur who is the ghost, Martha, the phantom.
Ah, I have caused you a good deal of worry, and I am going to cause you
yet more. I am going to Saigon; up and down the world, east and west,
until I find him. Shall I go alone, or will you go with me?"

Then Martha did what ever after endeared her to the heart of the
stricken girl: she mothered her. "Elsa, my baby! Of course I shall go
with you, always. For you could not love any man if he was not worthy."

Then followed the strangest quest doubtless ever made by a woman. From
Singapore to Saigon, up to Bangkok, down to Singapore again; to
Batavia, over to Hongkong, Shanghai, Pekin, Manila, Hongkong again,
then Yokohama. Patient and hopeful, Elsa followed the bewildering
trail. She left behind her many puzzled hotel managers and booking
agents: for it was not usual for a beautiful young woman to go about
the world, inquiring for a blond man with a parrot. Sometimes she was
only a day late. Many cablegrams she sent, but upon her arrival in
each port she found that these had not been called for. Over these
heart-breaking disappointments she uttered no complaint. The world was
big and wide; be it never so big and wide, Elsa knew that some day she
would find him.

In the daytime there was the quest; but, ah! the nights, the
interminable hours of inaction, the spaces of time in which she could
only lie back and think. Up and down the coasts, across islands, over
seas, the journey took her, until one day in July she found herself
upon the pillared veranda of the house in which her mother had been
born.

XX

THE TWO BROTHERS

From port to port, sometimes not stepping off the boat at all, moody,
restless and irritable, Warrington wended his way home. There was
nothing surprising in the fact that he never