The Luck of the Irish Part 2

CHAPTER XIV

THE unmarried woman must have something to satisfy her instincts of motherhood; thus we find the spinster coddling the cat or cooing to the canary. A single man has so many diversions that he need be lonely only during his meals, and not always then. He has no mother instincts; he cannot boast of father instincts before the fact.

Ruth, having finished her breakfast of toast and chocolate, sat cross-legged among the tumbled bed-clothes and analyzed an astonishing discovery. She had found an outlet to the mother instinct by establishing a protectorate over William Grogan. Since the death of her father she had been without any practical objective in life. She loved children, but it was impossible to mother the wild little animals under her tutelage. She never could get very close to them sentimentally, for the reason that teachers are looked upon by pupils as natural enemies. If some little girl made her the gift of a bouquet or some little boy left an apple on her desk, she readily understood the impulse behind the act—a plea for immunity from punishment the next time punishment was due. But to get them snuggling in her arms was nigh impossible.

The majority of them had all the mothering ​they wanted at home. They could put up with it there because they had to; but at school they considered any such advances as an encroachment upon their prerogatives. True, they would come running to her fast enough when they were hurt; but this was in quest of justice or sympathy, and teachers were the only grown-ups at hand.

So she awoke with the discovery that for several weeks, in fact since the landing at Naples, she had been mothering William Grogan, rescuing him from greedy shopkeepers, suppressing his careless generosity in the matter of tips, seeing to it that he never left anything on trains, warning him against sea-food in inland towns, teaching him by degrees what she knew of art and literature despite the fact that most of it went into one ear and out of the other.

Ruth gathered up her brush and comb from the little stand at the side of the bed and began brushing and combing her hair, which was golden-brown like the nest of a ripe chestnut. Her skin was fine and firmly padded, with a hint of gold in the soft, curving shadows. Her cambric night-gown, short in sleeve and loose at the shoulders, revealed vaguely the lovely contours of her young body. But as in William, her chief attraction lay in her eyes, deep gray, flecked with the variegated browns of an October leaf.

Mothering William Grogan with his shock of red hair, his amazing blue eyes, his irrepressible good humor, his irresponsible generosity! She laughed and rocked her body. It was so funny. Argu​ing with him what he should and should not spend, ordering him to do this or that, certain that he would always obey her, which he always did. Accustomed as she was to ruling children, it fell to her easily to dominate this Hercules who was only a child grown up. It never occurred to her to peer behind the curtain of this apparent docility. Besides, the experience had all the thrilling exhilaration of stroking a purring tiger; for while she might in time completely forget that morning in Venice, she would never forget the cold, murderous fire in William's eyes.

Eight o'clock! She sprang off the bed, lively and eager. They would be leaving for Port Said at nine-thirty, and she hadn't a bit of packing done. She ran to the window—sunshine, always sunshine. What a wonderful world it was! She began humming the spinning-song from "The Flying Dutchman," and turned to her suit-cases. It was an actual fact that these cases were visibly shrinking or else her clothes were growing. Soon she would be forced to buy a third case.

When everything was snugly packed away and not so much as a hairpin forgotten, she picked up William's little bag of gold and dropped it into the pocket of her skirt, pinning the aperture. Not only his mother, but his banker, too! She laughed. The bag was heavy and clumsy, but, once aboard, she could turn it over to William or the purser.

At eight-thirty she was in the lobby, searching for William. He was nowhere in sight, and she considered this rather unusual. So she found a ​chair in the midst of the confusion and sat down to wait. Her fellow-tourists began to depart in groups. Ten minutes to nine she became worried. Not belonging to that class of women who cannot do anything but wait, she went to the desk to learn if William had left word. He had not.

"Perhaps he has overslept," she suggested.

The clerk looked over the key-rack. "Here is his key, miss."

She thought for a moment. "It might be well to send some one up, at least to see if his luggage has been brought down. It is getting late."

"Very well, miss."

Five minutes later Ruth was informed that Mr. Grogan had not been in his room. His clothes lay about; nothing had been packed. Ruth was now alarmed.

"Give me the key and summon a maid for me," she said, resolutely. She did not care what people said.

She and the maid packed William's grips and carried them down-stairs. It was now ten minutes past nine. She could wait five minutes longer. What had happened? It was certain that he had not returned to the hotel last night. Promptness was one of William's virtues. Never before had she missed him in the morning. A dread thought, thrust it aside as she might, persisted. It did not matter that he was very strong, quick, and resourceful. Each time she shut her eyes she saw a man stealing treacherously up behind him.

At nine-fifteen she was forced to go to her car​riage. She dared not wait any longer. There was a possible chance of his arriving at the station the last moment. But there was no William Grogan on the train that left for Port Said that morning.

Her luggage and William's were stacked together in the corridor; and the Calcutta missioner eyed the pyramid gloomily as he passed the compartment.

Ruth imagined all sorts of calamities. William had been run over. He had been set upon and robbed. He was lying in a hospital, and was badly hurt, unable to tell who he was. And he might be dead. She kept up pluckily under the strain. For five and a half hours she sat in her corner stiffly, paying no heed to the calls for luncheon, not daring to close her eyes for fear of the pictures she would see behind the lids, replying absently to such questions as were put to her by the other ladies. What really gave her this fictitious strength was the hope that at Port Said there would be a telegram.

He was so strong that his strength would probably react against him. His assailants would be forced to beat him cruelly in order to plunder him safely. He had promised to return to the hotel immediately after the boxing-match, and no doubt the old craving to prowl had been his undoing.

She wished now that she had remained in Cairo. She could have searched the hospitals, notified the police and the consul. Moreover, she could have taken a late train to Suez and joined the Ajax ​there. An explanatory telegram would have held up the ship for an hour or so.

At Port Said there was no telegram awaiting Ruth.

Camden was one of the last to come on board. Ruth rushed up to him.

"Where is Mr. Grogan?"

"Grogan? Why, isn't he on board?"

"No. He didn't come back to the hotel last night."

"Good lord! Why, I left him at the door of the theater. Only a few turns, and he was at his hotel. But I shouldn't worry, Miss Jones." For Ruth was still "Miss Jones" to every one but William. "I say, I'll run down and send some wires, one to the police and one to the hotel. He may not think to take the night express to Suez."

"I'll be very grateful to you. I'm dreadfully worried. He hasn't the least idea what caution is."

"We've half an hour. I'll bring you the receipts for the telegrams." Camden made off.

When the Ajax began her slow voyage down the narrow canal, Ruth stood watch until Port Said became an indistinct blur to the north. At midnight she saw the lights of Ismailia approach and pass. The captain, having been apprised of the situation, watched for a signal "passenger to board"; but none came. It was then Ruth went below, but not to sleep, merely to rest her weary body.

At dawn the slithering of the anchor chains ​startled her from a doze. She hastily put on her kimono and went on deck. Suez lay off to starboard. The harbor lights were still shining, though they grew perceptibly dimmer and dimmer as the yellow pallor of dawn changed swiftly into bright gold. A string of coal-lighters were swinging around to port, and hundreds of Arabs swarmed over the dull black heaps of coal. There was in the air the promise of a very hot day.

The Ajax had dropped her anchor just outside the basin of Port Ibrahim. In the basin itself was a forest of masts and funnels; and from out the spaces between these hulls came dozens of small boats laden with fruit. Ruth strained her eyes in vain to discover a familiar head. What with the pall of coal-dust, the sharpening yellow haze, and the many heads dully red from the stains of henna, William's aureola would not have shone with any degree of conspicuity.

All hope died within her. If he was not dead he had at least passed out of her life for many months, if not forever. She bent her forehead to the teak rail, cool with dew. If she did not weep it was because her eyes were too dry for tears.

One of her hands lay inertly on the rail. Down upon this hand suddenly fell another, big and warm and firm. It was dirty, variously scratched, and streaked with blood. She looked up swiftly. The object of her fascinated gaze was literally in tatters. His collar was gone, likewise his hat. There was a hideous bump over the left ear, and all the way down the side of the head and neck ​was a broad streak of coagulated blood and coal-dust. The face was as black as a stoker's. Out of this murk appeared two rows of white teeth. She would have known that grin anywhere.

"William Grogan!" she gasped.

"Ye-ah; what's left," jauntily.

 

CHAPTER XV

WILLIAM never saw the hand that struck him down. Whether he had one or ten assailants was likewise to remain in the limbo of mysteries. He always recollected this adventure with the keenest regret. To sink down under the avalanche, fighting to the last moment, accounting for two or three among the many, was never considered a disgrace by any Irishman William knew. He was proud of his strength, and to pass into the land of coma without being permitted to exercise the functions of his hands and feet was galling to the memory.

As he left Madame Rene's dance-hall, so far as he could see the alley was deserted except for himself. Still, there were a dozen black doorways behind him and beyond. The last thing he remembered, he had taken out his old silver watch, not with any idea of ascertaining the time, but rather in surrender to that mechanical impulse common enough in men—when in doubt, look at your watch. Right there the top of heaven fell out.

Hours must have passed before he finally opened his eyes and sensed realities. The blow had been brutal, and doubtless would have permanently ​cracked a skull less solid. His initial impression was a curious one; he was nothing more than an enormous head, and all the aches known were fighting there for individual supremacy. His second impression was that he was sailing along at the tail of a comet, for no matter which way he looked he saw nothing but showers of sparks. It was when he felt a touch of nausea, thousands of miles away, that he knew for a certainty that his body was still attached to his neck. He attempted to reach up a hand to this freak head, only to learn that he was bound up as snugly as an Italian baby in the winter.

Too weak to struggle, he relaxed and lay back like a sensible but badly punished boxer between rounds. In time the vertigo passed away and slowly his body became normal. But he wisely allowed an hour or more to slip by before he began a serious attempt to free himself.

The damp, musty odor was familiar. He was in some kind of a cellar. A long distance away he was presently able to distinguish a square of dark blue in the jet black. It was a window. He was sitting with his back to a post of stone; he could feel the chill of it against his spine. And the damp of the clay floor penetrated his legs and thighs.

What time was it? Was it still midnight or was it well on toward morning? Before he wasted what little strength he had, he decided to wait for light. After what seemed hours and hours, the square of blue lightened and the velvet blackness ​took on a deep, foggy gray. Morning was approaching.

He now began to struggle. He would swell his muscles, then relax them suddenly, recalling the skill in this direction of a prestidigitator he had once seen at the vaudeville. By the time the outside world had turned yellow he had gained an inch or so at the wrists; but, in opposition to this, the rope had tightened around his elbows. This phenomenon convinced him that he was trussed up in a single coil of rope several yards long. Somewhere, then, there ought to be a weak spot. He rested his arms and began wriggling his feet.

He had lost considerable blood. His left shoulder was damp and soggy with it, and whenever he moved his head his neck burned and the hair pulled. He was grateful for one thing—they had not gagged him; he could get plenty of air into his lungs. But this fact added a new worry to those already accumulated—his captors did not care whether he yelled for help or not. He was dreadfully thirsty. He would have exchanged all his sovereigns for a dipper of cold water.

The four walls of the cellar began to take form, to stand out distinctly, and he could see about. What he saw troubled him. He was an old hand in the psychology of cellars. This was under a deserted house. Where? Was he across the way from Madame Rene's or had he been carried to another part of the town? While the clay was damp, there were no visible signs of moisture. Thus he reasoned that he was nowhere near the Nile.

​By the time it was full morning he could pull one foot up as far as his knee, but beyond that not an inch, nor could he free the foot. The rogues had made a very good job of it.

Naturally there came a period of self-reviling. He had been warned against prowling off by himself at night, especially here on the threshold of the Orient. But he would do it; and here he was, a prisoner with a battered head and a burning thirst. What were they holding him for—ransom? Pity they hadn't broken his fool head completely. … The Ajax! He sucked in his cheeks for a bit of saliva. The Ajax was sailing at three that afternoon, and from the looks of things it was going to sail without William Grogan. He forgot his caution, forgot how little strength he possessed, and fought his bonds as a tiger fights the hunting-net. Snarling and cursing, he sawed his feet and pulled at his wrists. He desisted quickly enough. The sparks began to fly again and the full flood of pain returned. He sank back against the pillar, gasping.

"What a fool! What a fool!"

He had promised Ruth faithfully to return to the hotel as soon as the fights were over. He had broken his promise; and she was all alone. He began hiccoughing, as much in rage as in pain.

Far above a door closed carelessly. William raised his head, listening tensely and trying to strangle the hiccoughs. But the sound of footsteps did not follow the banging of the door. It might have been the wind. Yet, even as he was about ​to accept this as a solution, the door leading into the cellar swung on its stiff hinges and a small Arab boy came down the stone steps. He wore a kind of smock, ragged and dirty; his legs and feet were bare, and probably had been since the hour of his birth. Perched rakishly on the top of his shaven poll was a dilapidated fez minus the tassel, the stem of which stood up like that of an apple. He was sore-eyed but flyless, his particular bevy of flies having rebelled, doubtless, against the possibility of being immured in darkness. The Cairo fly is a firm believer in sunshine.

The boy carried a loaf of bread under one arm and a water-jar under the other. The water-jar was like those William had often admired on the heads of the graceful balancing Egyptian women. The boy approached William and stared; his glance was neither bold nor timorous, only mildly curious. The boy looked at him quite as William would have looked at a strange fish in the Battery Aquarium at home. Having satisfied his eyes, the boy nonchalantly dropped the bread to the ground and held the water-jar against William's swollen lips. William drank like a spent race-horse. Next the boy offered the bread, but William shook his head.

"Speak English?" he demanded, thickly.

The boy dropped the bread again, rose and walked to the stairs, which he began to mount. He could not have worn a more stolid expression had he been deaf and dumb.

"Hey, come back here!"

​The boy disappeared. Later the street door banged.

"Well, what do you know about that?" asked William, addressing his shoes. "Not a sound out of him! Not a blink! Well, it's up to me to climb out of this and climb quick. … Hell!" he cried as a stabbing pain pierced his eyes.

The window was eight feet above the floor. In a corner stood a smoothly worn plank of teakwood, which had evidently been used as a chute for boxes or bales from the outside, perhaps cotton bales, as there were tufts of cotton here and there about the corners. From this point of view this was a complete inventory. William hitched sideways; the other half of the cellar was as bare as his palm. But in turning he made a discovery which at the time suggested nothing—a spike in the stone pillar, a foot above his head. The outlook was not at all promising. His jailers would probably keep him confined until night, when they might safely liberate him—that is, if it was not ransom. Well, they hadn't struck much oil, and wouldn't. Four sovereigns and a watch which had two values, sentimental and intrinsic, one hundred minus ninety-eight, if you reckoned pawnbroker style; for two dollars marked the high-water rate of exchange at Uncle Mose Cohen's over on Eighth Avenue.

Bang! It was the outer door again. The boy returned with two Syrian oranges. He squatted at William's side, split the fruit, and solemnly poked the scarlet slices into the yawning mouth ​eager to receive them. When the oranges had vanished, the boy tilted the water-jar scientifically and William was no longer thirsty. But he lowered his head suggestively. The boy understood the movement, for he sluiced William's head generously.

"You're the real Samaritan, all right, boy. And when you go to Paradise I hope they'll give you a harem two blocks long."

In return for this excellent wish the boy, without the least sign of greediness, proceeded to rifle William's pockets; and he was as thorough as a German chemist. The result of this immoral procedure was a penknife, the key to William's steamer trunk, two double piasters from a vest pocket which had been overlooked by the boy's elders, four receipted hotel bills, and a picture post-card. The boy tucked these ill-gotten gains under his fez and sprang up.

This was too much for William's risibles. He chuckled.

"In business for yourself, huh? Well, you're welcome. Going? Take care of yourself. Anyhow, I guess you've saved one Irishman's life."

Alone once more, he renewed his efforts to loosen the rope. Again he was forced to give up. After this he fell asleep. The banging of kettledrums and the mournful wailing of reeds awoke him. The sounds passed and dwindled. He heard the bleating protest of a camel. The angle of sunshine appalled him. It must be somewhere around five o'clock in the afternoon. He had slept the major ​part of the day. The Ajax was already on its way down to the Red Sea.

He sidled toward the water-jar, wondering if he could get a drink without wasting the precious fluid. His tongue was hot with fever again. Chance directed his gaze toward the spike in the pillar, and this time an idea was born. If he could manage to get his wrists on the level with that spike. …

It was an arduous task. After half an hour spent in wriggling and twisting and balancing, he gained his feet. Then he leaned toward the spike and began carefully to work the knot against it.

An hour later he kicked the rope off his feet. He knew better than to rush to the window immediately. He needed life in his tingling legs and arms. Yet, he hadn't much time. The boy or his elders might now return at any moment. He drank deeply, ate some bread, took out his handkerchief (which the boy had ignored for lack of understanding), and bathed the cut. Despite this refreshment, he felt weak and dizzy.

He then proceeded to place the chute against the window-ledge, crawled up with infinite labor, and wormed himself through. As he rose to his feet he heard the shrill whistle of a railway engine. He could not have asked for a more timely bit of aid. He started off in the direction of this glorious whistle at a shambling trot. His progress resembled that of a drunken man, for he was growing more and more light-headed. But he stuck to it doggedly. The houses careened at times, and the ​dusty road had a peculiar way of sinking and rising like the waves of the sea.

He was in the native quarters; but none hindered his advance. They knew, these experienced brown men, that it was not wise to trifle with red-headed drunken men. Some children tagged along at his heels, however, shrilling insults and ribald jests, knowing themselves to be immune from any attack more serious than a chance smack of the hand or a boot's end. By and by they desisted; the sport was too tame. I doubt if William saw or heard them.

He had picked out a spot in the sky and was marching toward the world directly under it. That whistle had come out of there somewhere, and nothing should deter him from reaching that somewhere. A wild compass to steer by. He had neither sea-lore nor wood-lore; he had not the least comprehension of what a range meant, yet he found the railway.

When he came around to a clear understanding of time and place—for he had made this remarkable journey in a semi-delirious condition—the night wind was roaring in his face and ears, and the desert, endless reaches of dull silver under the touch of moonshine, was racing past. He was crouching among the heavy folds of canvas which partially covered a box-car in a long goods-train, speeding in what direction only God knew.

At four o'clock in the morning the train drew into a small town and thence out onto a long cement pier south of which lay a broad stretch of ​water. There were many ships at anchor. Thus, by the kindly grace of God, who watches over fools, drunken men, and particularly lovers, William had reached the port of his heart's desire, Suez.

After making several inquiries, he found the coal-lighters were in readiness to move out the moment the Ajax dropped off Port Ibrahim. He went aboard one of these. The Arabs did not molest him. Quite within reason they thought he was some drunken stoker who had lost his ship at Port Said. He certainly looked disreputable enough.

When he saw the Ajax slip out of the canal, when he heard the metallic music of her chains, he laid his dizzy head upon his knees. It seemed almost impossible that he had accomplished it. There was a big gap. He could remember nothing from the moment he had left his prison until he sensed his surroundings aboard the goods-train.

"Sister," he murmured, "but for you I'd never have made it, believe me! Maybe God ain't good to one red-headed Mick! Now, who's this man Orestes who was with Colburton that night in Venice? That's the guy I'm looking for."

CHAPTER XVI

"AND that's what happened, sister," he said, later. "It can't be done, it can't be done. I'm going along with the Ajax, and that's all there is to it."

"I could shake you!" she cried, hysterically.

"Don't try it, sister; I'm not stuck together very well this morning."

"I knew you'd been hurt; and once I was sure that you were dead. How I have worried! You deserve a shaking," she repeated. It was a case of talk or cry.

"Believe me, I got the shaking all right."

"Your poor head!"

"Some little old good-night sign they hung on me—huh?"

"But you promised me—"

"Guilty as charged! And, say, of all the punk dancing I ever saw, those dames beat the clock! There used to be a bear out at the Bronx; he had the rheumatism, and for a peanut he'd dance those skirts to a standstill. Now, don't you worry about my head. It's solid ivory. But I wish you could have seen the Arab kid frisk my pockets. It was worth two dollars a seat, standing room only. The little rat never batted an eye-winker. Well, ​no more prowling alone at night. That goes. Now you toddle along to your bunk. I'm going for a wash-up. Gee! When I think of what I'm going to do to that cake of soap! I'll have the doc fix the cut."

"I still don't understand how you got here."

"Well, I'll tell you how the day you tell me what I've got that scholars haven't"; and before she could frame a reply he had disappeared into the companionway.

After the bath the doctor took six stitches in the cut and ordered William to stay in his berth until late in the afternoon. So when he came on deck at tea-time the Ajax was well down into the Red Sea. He was mildly disappointed, and he complained to Ruth over their tea-cups. There was no change in the color of the water. It might have been different in Biblical times, but there was no license for calling it red in the year nineteen-twelve. All this nonsense cheered Ruth. Apparently nothing could crush or depress the dynamic spirit of this adopted brother of hers, To be able to joke after all he had gone through!

She pondered over the whimsy of fate that had brought William's path parallel and adjacent to her own. A beautiful natural friendship like this, to bud and blossom out of a pair of shoes, her own, flitting day by day past his cellar window! It read like a fairy-story. A beautiful friendship because it was based upon protection and confidence, the very keystone of friendship.

Scarcely half a dozen passengers had heard of ​William's adventure; and their knowledge did not extend beyond the vague information that he had been set upon and robbed. That he had not come aboard at Port Said none suspected. Only Ruth, Camden, and the ship's officers had this side of the tale. Except for a bit of swelling and a dull-red mark against the lighter red of his hair, he struck the casual eye as being normal as usual.

Camden, because the weather was thick and hot, decided to remain below until near sunset. He had the steward put out a chair on the main deck, under his port, and all day long he loafed there in his pajamas and bath-robe, smoking and reading. When the steward came and asked him if he would be wanting tea, Camden declared that he would dress and go above for that.

At quarter after five he went into the smoke-room and had his tea there. He was reading from a bundle of American newspapers, reviewing the big league standings, when he felt the springs of the lounge bound. He looked around to behold an amiably grinning ghost.

"Where the devil did you come from?" Camden demanded. "I thought we'd lost you. I told you to go straight back to your hotel last night. Miss Jones has been frantic. Well, what happened?"

"I followed a man."

"No doubt; and got that beautiful crack on the side of the head."

"And all he got was about four sovereigns. Yea, bo!"

​"You didn't have your money with you?"

"Nope. Say, but the Irish are lucky. They can't beat us for luck. There's been a jinx hanging around me for months. It's like this. Two or three years ago I got mixed up in a Black Hand row. Sent 'em up the river. But some of them friends kept tab on me, and these wops laid for me in Naples, Florence, in Rome. Ye-ah. But here's William Grogan, large as life. They finally got to my letter of credit. Naples. They tried the game once in mid-Atlantic. And I never suspected it was a wop that jumped me that night. But they didn't get the pink book with my signature. In Rangoon a new one will be waiting for me at Cook's."

"And so you think you've laid the jinx?"

"Well, it begins to look like it."

"Didn't you tell me you knew the way back to the hotel?"

"And so I did. But I was invited to Madame Rene's soo-ary—the light fantastic, very light—and I went. And then somebody hit me on the bean with a gas-pipe."

"They rooked you, of course."

"Well, you might call it petty larceny. I had only four sovereigns and an old silver watch. So I guess the joke was on them. Caught a freight from Cairo to Suez. Bunged up a little, but nothing to speak of."

Camden folded his papers. "Grogan, I'll split a pint of wine."

"Wine? Nothing doing."

​"Might as well. Not a soul on board will believe you weren't off on a bender."

"Let 'em believe."

"Well, one thing is certain—you need a guardian."

"Maybe I've got one."

"Sure enough—Irish luck. You're a wonder. I know this part of the world. Not one man in a thousand would have got out of that hole."

"I had to get out," said William, gravely.

"Tell me the whole adventure."

William was agreeable. It was all a huge joke to him, of the kind he took a good deal of pleasure in telling. "But that Arab kid!" he concluded, tenderly rubbing his head. "I wish you could have seen his fiz. Mrs. Sphinx was his grandmother, take it from me."

"You won't split a bottle?"

"Nope. I take my Catawbas with the skins on."

"That reminds me. A man doesn't like to refer to those lapses where he behaves like a fool. You played the Good Samaritan that night in Brindisi. Thanks. Grogan, the truth is, I travel to keep away from New York. There I'm lost: too many friends. When I'm at sea I get away from it all and kind of get a grip on life again. You understand?"

"Sure. And so I won't drink with you. There's nothing to it."

"Nothing in this wide world," Camden agreed, staring at the floor.

It was at Aden. Camden was leaving the Ajax ​at that modified hell on the bleak Arabian shore. The Ajax did not drop her anchor; she simply stopped her engines and drifted slowly. Only three passengers were to disembark, Camden and two British officers who had come aboard at Port Said. The sun was just up. William wore only his pajamas and bath-robe; he had been sleeping on deck.

"Good-by and good luck," he said, as Camden started down the ladder.

"So long, Orestes; take care of yourself," called back Camden as he stepped in among the Arab boatmen.

And the deed was done, the veil rent. The short hair at the base of William's neck stood out like the hair on the back of a dog in the fighting-pit. Orestes! The grin on his lips suffered a temporary petrifaction which lasted until the Arab oarsmen were well under way. The jackal! Camden waved his hand airily. William replied with a menacing fist; but Camden was too far away to appreciate the significance of that gesture.

CHAPTER XVII

CAMDEN, blissfully unconscious that he had let the cat out of the bag, landed at the jetty. It was early morning, yet the heat was already excessive and enervating.

"Mr. Camden!"

Camden turned to find Norton Colburton's Japanese valet at his elbow.

"Hello, Saki! Where's your master?"

"He iss at the offissers' club, and wants to see you at once, sar."

"Where's the yacht?"

"Back at ten o'clock, sar."

"All right. Nort is up pretty early for him."

The valet shrugged. His master got up early or he got up late, it was all the same to him.

Camden barked some words to his Arab boatmen—he had a traveler's smattering of half a dozen tongues—and proceeded into town. At seven-thirty he rapped on the door of Colburton's room at the officers' club and was bidden to enter.

Colburton was in pajamas and sandals, and he was sipping tea.

"Glad to see you, Dick." He waved his hand toward a chair. "Haven't been to bed yet. ​Bridge all night. Well, what's the news from the good ship Ajax?"

Camden lighted a cigarette and inhaled deeply. "Punk, if you want to know. The Irishman turned up at Suez. Not one man in ten thousand would have got out of the hole I put him in. I warned you in Venice."

"You were probably off on your old trick—champagne. Camden, while you're at work for me you cut out that or I'll drop you."

Camden's eyes narrowed. It might have been the smoke of his cigarette. "When you called me up in June and gave me that photograph, I kept away from the stuff. Believe it or not. I combed New York with a fine-tooth comb. Knowing that she went to the movies, I patronized them until my eyes began to fail. Never saw her. I hunted up all the school-teachers who knew her. Not a crumb. I tried the branch post-office, with barren results. Finally I happened to think of the school commissioners. That was the last chance. Here luck was with me. She was not sure that she would teach in the fall term. I told them I was a lawyer and that there was a small legacy. They gave me her new address. When I got there she was gone. She had gone that afternoon. The landlady didn't know where she had gone. Anyhow, she wasn't coming back. I asked to see the room she had vacated. Here I was detective. On the floor of that room I found a crumpled ship's label—the Ajax. I left. Later I learned that the Ajax was making a tour of the world and ​would sail the following afternoon. I took a chance. Two grips were all I had. I saw her go up the gang-plank. All pretty work, if you want my opinion. Late that night I sent a wireless to you."

"Any detective could have done that for a hundred, and I gave you two thousand as a starter, another thousand in Venice, with the promise of five at the end of the run. And you couldn't even get the best of a red-headed Irishman who ought to have been clay in your hands."

"There are various kinds of clay," replied Camden, moodily. "I tell you, this Gerry Owen is out of the ordinary. He's as strong as a lion. He was born and brought up on the streets, which is to say he's no man's fool. I stole his letter of credit. I set thugs upon him in Rome and Florence; I packed him away with a broken head in Cairo; and he bade me good-by from the starboard rail this morning. To this hour I don't know whether he suspects me or not. I've used every kind of a trap to pump him, and never got a drop. He's watching over that girl. He's in love with her."

Colburton got up and began to pace the room; but this activity proved too much for him, and he sat down abruptly.

"Better call it off," suggested Camden.

"You have never known me to steer off, have you?"

"No, Orestes, I have not; and some day you're going to get bumped hard. Keep your hair on. ​We grew up together; but you were hard and I was soft. You never let cards and wine get the best of you, nor any woman, for that matter. Devil a bit do I care which way it goes; I'll go on with it. I need money. And the job you offer me is the only kind left for a polecat like myself."

"Moralizing, eh?"

"No, I used to moralize. I do still when I've just got over a bender. Bad as I am, there's a white corner or two sticking around in my soul; and I don't like the looks of this deal. It doesn't look successful."

"Leave that end of it to me. I'll break your Gerry Owen, and then I'll break the girl. Break her like that!" Colburton closed his fists and struck them against his knees.

"Then you only want to break her?" asked the jackal, curiously. "You're not mad about her any more, then?"

"What's that to you?"

"Nothing, m' lord, nothing. But you might lower your tone a little. I don't like it."

Colburton plucked at his mustache. "Has she made any attempt to dispose of it?"

"No. She's a woman. She's probably deathly afraid by now. What 'll I do to Grogan?"

"Leave him to me. The yacht will be off the jetty at ten. You go aboard of her. You'll find your trunks in your old cabin. We go straight to Ceylon. From there to Perak, where I'm going to do a little hunting."

"That's a long time to wait."

​Colburton drank his tea. "Want some?"

"Had my breakfast on board." Camden smiled at the other's sudden conciliatory mood. So long as this Pied Piper of Petticoat Lane had use for him, there was no need to worry about the immediate future. Besides, he had an idea. If it worked out he could go on his own for several years to come. "When will you come aboard the Elsa?"

"About four. Some officers are coming. There'll be bridge. I'll drop out after dinner and you can play a few rubbers. They're a reckless lot. Sixpence a point."

"Thanks for the manna. It pleases me to know that you know I'm not a crook with cards, only skilful. Well, I'll see you at four. What are your plans?"

"I'm mulling them over now. I want her to believe I've given up. I'll let her have October and November. She'll grow careless. I'll fix your Irishman."

"I'll do my share, but it's got to be a plausible trick, Orestes, a plausible trick. The way that man Grogan hovers around that girl is an illumination. He knows that something's wrong, that she's in danger, though he doesn't know what it is."

"I ran into him in Venice," said Colburton, coldly. "I'm glad you tell me he's in love with her. If you can twist a man's heart, it's better than twisting his bones."

Camden departed. Poor Grogan! It was not ​possible that he should slip through every trap. Sooner or later, he would have to pay dearly for his devotion. For Camden could not get away from the fact that he liked the Irishman. Supposing he surrendered to the impulse to clear out? Within six months' time he would be absolutely penniless, living in some cheap boarding-house which would automatically grow cheaper as the days went by. His good clothes and his jewels would be in pawn. … No use. H was no good; it was too late now even if he wanted earnestly to be good. He was too deeply in the web. It was written; he would have to go on to the end. He would probably die alone in some Oriental rat-hole.

Camden laughed suddenly. There was a chance for him, if he played his cards carefully. It was worth trying. It was, in truth, his main reason for accepting this equivocal adventure.

Midnight.

The Elsa tugged at her cables. Somewhere out in the Indian Ocean a great storm was running. Colburton's guests had returned to the town, and he sat alone among the empty bottles and scattered cards. The little silk curtains over the open ports flapped and snapped. Outside, the davits creaked, now to starboard, now to port.

The saloon was richly furnished. It served both as dining-room and lounge during rough weather. Port and starboard ran low book-shelves, and there were several hundred books in exquisite ​hides. But not one of them appeared thumbed, beloved. On this yacht books had never been a source of amusement, they had never been reckoned as friends; they went with the teak, the gilt, and the Persian rugs. Your real library should be haunted by friendly ghosts; but if there were any ghosts in this one, they were still tight in their tombs. This was a pleasure yacht which the present owner had inherited six years before.

Over the mantel was the portrait of an elderly man. The artist had done what he could to soften the face; but because he was an artist one saw the money-changer in the Temple in the cold, thin lips and repellent eyes. At the other end of the saloon, over the sideboard, was the portrait of a woman. This, too, had been idealized; yet even so one caught the emptiness of the eyes, the vanity and selfishness in the droop of the lips. One was the father and the other was the mother of the young man below.

But he was an old young man. You might have computed his age in eons instead of years. He was thirty-five; and a man should be really young at that age. He was well built, quite graceful when he moved, and undeniably handsome—that is, if you weren't specialized in physiognomy. His eyes were like his father's; but the mother lips of him were hidden under a well-turned mustache.

Norton Colburton was what his parents had made him. We all are, more or less. There is no reason why our immediate progenitors should not ​be forced to carry some of the burden. A cold-blooded, money-making father on one side and a vain, dissatisfied pleasure-loving mother on the other, it followed naturally that these attributes should combine in the offspring. The old man had roared and cursed at the son, and the mother had pampered him. The boy had afforded the parents a mutual ground for quarreling. They never met that they did not wrangle over him. Not that they cared particularly whether he went wrong or right, but because the elder Colburton hated his wife and was despised by her. A man with the soul of David might have come through this unscathed; but the younger Colburton had the soul of a Jacob, always ready to exchange a mess of pottage for a birthright.

All alone now, free of all manner of leashes, he was proud of his riches and the power they gave him. He was an unfettered king. He had absolute freedom. He had millions which would not fritter away, no matter how deeply he plunged his hands into them. All doors opened at a nod from his head, and a gesture scattered obstacles as the north winds scatter the dead leaves of autumn. To wish was to have, which is not a good thing for any man.

Norton Colburton had never done a kindness without some ulterior purpose, always negative so far as goodness was concerned. Women were a source of pleasure and amusement. That they had been predestined to bring up sons straight and clean was an idea which lay unformative in his ​mind. He never saw in any of his dreams, as William Grogan saw in his, a home, a garden, a wife, and a couple of kids.

As he smoked his pipe, his eyes half closed, he smiled from time to time. By and by he laughed outright and summoned his valet.

"Cable blanks," he said. He wrote: "Cook, Rangoon. Forward all mail Bombay office at once." He signed this cable—"William Grogan."

Then he went to bed.

CHAPTER XVIII

WILLIAM found it hard to resist the desire to leap the rail, swim out to Camden, and throttle him. He might have done so but for one thing. Aden was English. Recently he had heard something about the immutability of the English law. If you killed a man in cold blood they really made you pay the penalty, these Britishers. It did not matter a continental whoop how many dollars and lawyers you could mobilize; if they found you guilty you paid the penalty. You couldn't lug in brain-storms, alienists, and handwriting experts, appeal from court to court until for very weariness some jury would let you go. No; these Britishers hanged you or sent you to penal servitude for life, and no back talk.

So William did not jump overboard. They would have locked him up in Aden, tried him, and hanged him. Under such conditions the death of Camden would benefit no one but Colburton, who might be pleased to hear of the death of his jackal. Besides, William saw another side of the square: he hadn't a shred of real evidence against Camden, he had only suppositions. He knew, but the law would not be able to recognize what he knew as evidence.

​There was not a shadow of doubt in his mind; everything now dovetailed so nicely. For what reason had Camden stolen his wallet, his letter of credit, set rogues upon him in Rome and Florence and Cairo? To put him out of the way so as to leave Ruth without protection. No one on board the Ajax would have bothered to watch over her.

Orestes! Just a little word like that to rend the veil completely. From under the ports of the yacht Elsa he had heard that name, and Camden himself had spoken it. Hadn't Camden's voice been familiar yet unplaceable? And yet, day after day, they had been together, and the man's voice had awakened no recollection. William's pride in his ability to reduce complexities into simplicities, after the fashion of his favorite detectives, had received a rude buffet.

"You scum! If I wasn't the biggest boob that ever wore a collar, you wouldn't be in that boat, standing up. Laughing behind my back all these weeks, and nearly getting me in Cairo. Orestes, huh? You wait; I've got a trick yet. You're going away without knowing I know, and there's where I'm going to get you when the time comes. And when I get through with you and your master, neither of you'll ever bother another woman. Scum!"

He had often heard and read of men like Colburton, but he had not credited their actual existence. William knew the man as a hunter of women, but that he would let his fancy lead him around the world was a revelation as to what ​lengths such men would go in pursuit of their mad pleasures.

William sloughed off a considerable quantity of veneer that morning. He wanted to beat something, crush and pound. A deck-hand accidentally bumped against him, and William turned upon him with a snarl so baldly savage that the poor devil jumped back, spilling his bucket.

"Beg pardon, sir; beg pardon!"

"Look where you're going!"

William, realizing that he must find something upon which to vent his rage, opened the door to the gymnasium, threw aside his bath-robe, and began hammering the bag. For half an hour the thunder of it could be heard all over the deck.

It was childish; no one would grant that more readily than William himself. Not half a dozen times in his life had such murderous rage laid hold of him. So it was far better to rid himself of it in this childish manner than to carry it around simmering in his heart. By the time he had got out of his tub he was normal enough to feel ashamed of himself.

He would say nothing to Ruth. Why worry her? She believed—or at least she pretended to believe—that that chapter in her life had been turned down. And it was his self-appointed task to see that it remained turned down. But in failing to disclose his discovery to Ruth he made a terrible mistake, one which was o cause him ten days of the most indescribable misery he was ever to know.

​Later, when Ruth came up, she saw nothing amiss. She put her usual questions perfunctorily. Had he slept well? Did the pain bother him during the night? For all that the cut had healed quickly and healthily, William was subjected occasionally to splitting headaches, a sign indicative that he had come out of that affair in Cairo by a very narrow margin.

"So Mr. Camden has really left us?" she said, lying back lazily, grateful for the shade of the deck canopy. "He was rather amusing at times."

"Ye-ah." A growl.

"He was well informed about this part of the world."

"Ye-ah." A little louder.

"He left a dozen books for me. Maeterlinck—think of it! Very nice of him, wasn't it?"

"Ye-ah!" A real bark.

"What's the matter?"

"Matter?"

"Ye-ah," she mimicked. "Can't you say 'uh-huh' for a change?"

William did not want to laugh. At the mention of Camden all the early fury returned. He knew his Irish temperament; if he laughed his anger would go by the board; and his mood now was one which found a melancholy pleasure in fanning the coals of hate to keep them alive against the day when he and Camden met again. But there was this that worried him: his gray-eyed school-teacher could see like a cat in the dark; and if once she sensed anything wrong, her questions might ​become embarrassing. So he compromised by forcing a grin.

"I guess you can't teach old dogs new tricks. I never knew there was a word called 'yes' until it was too late to do any good. But I don't say 'uh-huh' as much as I used to. 'S that right? And, anyhow 'ye-ah' is Elijah stuff boiled down."

"Elijah stuff!"

He sighed relievedly. She was off the Camden line, and that was something gained. "Sure it's Elijah stuff. Wasn't he always hitting the trail with 'Yea, verily'?"

"I'm beginning to believe you wouldn't please me at all if you didn't use colloquialisms once in a while. Away out here there's something back-homey about them. The Indian Ocean, Arabia! That Red Sea was very hot."

"If they'd call it the Red-hot Sea I could understand what they meant. I've been leaving a trail of fat wherever I moved. Look at the clothes I'm wearing. I never thought to buy real summer stuff. They're beginning to have their first snow-storms in little New York. Say, what do you think? Thanksgiving in Delhi, and not a pumpkin within ten thousand miles."

"Honest?"

"Honest Injun. And Christmas in Hong-Kong, and everything out of tin cans. Yea, verily, I'm going to be homesick along about that time, believe me, sister."

"Christmas! I feel cooler already."

​Four deck-hands appeared at a run. They began working at the canvas canopy.

"What's the trouble?" demanded William, getting up.

"Orders to lash everything, sir. Blow coming up fast out of the sou'east, sir."

William and Ruth ran to the starboard rail and stared at the great evil pall of blue-black clouds pouring up over the eastern horizon. The face of the waters changed even as they gazed.

"A storm!" she cried.

"Well, Cook can't soak us extra for that," said William.

Ruth ran back to the chairs and gathered up the rugs, pillows, and books, piling them into William's outstretched arms. "Hurry!"

The companionway was jammed with excited tourists. William heard "typhoon" and "tornado" and "hurricane"; and one of the missioners began to recount a previous adventure of his in which the ship went down, and was only too happy to go into details. William surged toward him, hoping to get within range of the fool's shins. But the second officer spoke up loudly. Typhoon was all nonsense; only a stiffish blow was coming and would probably be over in an hour or two.

William was not satisfied, however. He knew where he could get the truth; and so he started for the chief engineer's cabin. But as he encountered that officer in the act of descending to the engine-room, his official drill exchanged for greasy dunga​rees, William comprehended that he and his fellow-voyagers were in for some excitement.

"A blow?"

"Aye, and a hell of a one, too, if I know anything about these dirty waters. This blow is a thousand miles from home, Mr. Grogan; and I don't like its looks. It's Chinese, and we're just off the coast of Araby. Y' never can tell what's in the egg when y' turn the point at Aden. Oh, there's no real danger. She'll pitch a lot and the stewards 'll be busy with their yellow basins. But it's me and the captain without relief as long as it lasts; twenty hours for me in yon hell-hole, mayhap. Can't ask you to come down, Mr. Grogan. Good luck to your lunch—if you've got the gall to eat it!"

William stole back to the smoke-room. It was deserted. Then he remembered that he could see little or nothing from this point; so he went forward to the ladies' saloon. That, too, was deserted. Rugs and pillows and books and baskets of fruit lay strewn about. He knelt on the lounge under a forward port and peered out. It was almost as black as night outside; but the sea was green and terrible. Suddenly he sensed a shiver; it seemed to come from the very bowels of the ship, as if she had become a living thing, sensing her trap. Shortly after this he heard a sound which reminded him of rubbing resined fingers over the top of a deep glass tumbler. This piercing hum rang in his ears intermittently hours after the storm was over.

​There was no pitching in the beginning; the wind bore down too powerfully for that. It lashed the water into ribbons of spume, however. He heard a crack like a pistol-shot. The canvas had been ripped off one of the life-boats. For a moment or two it clung to a davit, then whirled seaward like a gray bird of evil omen.

Strange thing, there was not the least fear in William's heart. On the contrary, he was filled with the wildest exultation he had ever known. He longed to go outside, to lay against that wind and laugh and shout and sing.

Over the starboard bow—for they were going into the gale almost head-on rose a thin sheet of water, so thin that William could see through it. It hung in mid-air for two or three seconds—a viper seeking for something to strike—then smashed upon the deck. He knew instantly where he had heard that sound before—when they sent sheet-tin down the cellar chute at the shop.

The shop! How unutterably far off that was! Wasn't that all a piece of a humdrum dream? Could he ever return and settle down ? Never had he felt so keenly and wonderfully alive as at this moment.

The bow of the Ajax went down, down, down, fathoms down. From the dining-saloon came the racket of crashing dishes. The potted palm on the piano fell with a crash. William laughed. Then the bow of the Ajax went up, up, up. He had to hang to the grip of the port to keep from sliding off his perch. The ship did not fall far ​this time. She struck a roller a thousand years old, and tons and tons of green water rushed over the deck. A forgotten magazine swam about frantically but hopelessly. It fluttered like a wounded gull against a boat-block, then slumped overboard. William chuckled. Inanimate things did not have much show. But a man, now! He was letting himself be carried along by the elemental and irresistible desire to escape this stuffy cabin and to see if he could stand up under that smashing wind and wave. To get out there and fight, to yell back at that infernal bell-like humming! Chinese, was it? Well, he'd like to show the old pigtail that William Grogan was no milksop.

The Ajax began to plunge heavily. William's fancy had made the ship a living thing, and she was fighting. Each time a great monster threatened to engulf her she slammed down her steel forefoot and split it, broke it, shattered it.

"Go it, old girl! Beat 'em down, smash 'em! Don't let 'em bluff you; soak it to 'em! Tha's a girl! Show 'em up! Tell 'em you're from little ol' New York, where they have to show you. Tha's a girl! Wow!"

He had forgotten Camden, he had forgotten Ruth; there was nothing left in the world at all but himself and the storm. He slipped off the lounge and flung his hat to the floor; the ancient Celt was sticking out all over him. He staggered to the port door. This was in the lee, but as he opened it the blast took away his breath. He did ​not hear the steward's yell of warning, and he wouldn't have minded if he had. It took all his strength—twofold in this mad hour—to shut the door. He hung on to the knob—he had to.

"God! but this tastes good!"

He shifted his grip from the knob to the hand-rail which ran around the deck-houses and began to pull himself forward, all the while ankle-deep in the back-wash. The whole world was green, the sky and the sea, green like emeralds, green like the horse-chestnuts in the spring, and the white-caps were the blossoms.

From all directions came the crackling and slapping of canvas. The mysterious hum had now deepened. It took William's memory back to the Italian cathedrals where priests or choir-boys were eternally intoning. There was also an under-tone, but this was due to the vibrating wires and cables; the great diapason was the wind itself.

Some chairs had broken loose from their lashing on the starboard side, and a tangle of sticks and cane bottoms swirled about at the junction of the cross and port rails, for the deck was now constantly flooded.

William continued to pull himself along. He turned the corner finally. The full wind caught him and slammed him violently against the deck-house. His solid meat and bone were like so much straw. The impact knocked the breath out of him, and he clung to the hand-rail, gasping. He ​battled in vain to turn his face to windward; each attempt left him blind and breathless. His strength was of paper. The swoop of the wind sucked the air out of his lungs—zip!—like that; and he had to bury his face in the crook of his arm to get anything like a full breath. He was beaten, beaten at the start, and he knew it. And yet he laughed. His body was weak, yes, but God Himself had not loosed the wind that could put fear into the heart of William Grogan.

He slipped around again to leeward, where he took in deep, sobbing breaths. His lungs stung as in zero weather after a hard run for a street-car. He was drenched, too. Forward there was a ceaseless volleying of deluges, and when they struck they hurt.

"You win!" he cried, strangling and laughing. "I can lick my weight in wildcats and near-champions, but I know the real article when I see it. Zowie!"

But he had felt the tempest in the roots of his hair, and that was what he had come out for. He was never going to be bothered with headaches again. If he could get to the rear of the smoke-room there might be a chance to see what was going on without risking his life. He made the distance without mishap. Midway aft the deck-houses there was but little wind. He shook himself and wiped the water out of his eyes. Once more he laughed. Only an hour or so back there had not been a ripple on the oily swells, and now all hell seemed broken loose.

​After a short rest he manœuvered around the starboard end, into the teeth of the storm again … and paused, doubting his eyes.

A dozen feet away was a woman in white. She lay against the deck-house, wind-driven, her arms wound around the hand-rail. Her tawny hair was blowing straight out behind her, though many strands of it seemed glued to the white panels. She had the appearance of one of those Italian bas-reliefs, for every line of her body was drawn clearly under the soaking, clinging linen. A witch, a mermaid, or a good old Irish banshee! Evidently she dared not let go.

Sea after sea broke forward. The infernal mingling of titanic noises—the snapping of canvas, the roaring ventilators, the doors forward and aft banging monotonously, the rumbling of the steam, the convulsive creaking shudder of the ship as the screws flung themselves free of the water, and the immensity of that great, humming m-m-m-m!—it was hell without brimstone.

The only thing that saved the girl from suffocation was the projection of the middle saloon. This broke the density and volume of the waves. Nevertheless, sheet after sheet slapped against her body resoundingly. She had probably come out for a forgotten book or rug, he thought. The little fool!

"Creep back, and don't let go that hand-rail! Do just as I tell you!" he yelled; but the gale drove the words back into his throat. The bellow of a Cyclops would not have reached the girl's ​ears understandingly. There was nothing for it but to go after her. He put his free arm around her. Then she turned. It was Ruth, and she was laughing! "Good God!"

The fear for her safety turned him into something of a brute. That she should dare risk her life like this in play! A strong man had some chance, but a woman none. The rescue—for no doubt it was a rescue—had none of those niceties which made certain mid-Victorian chapters memorable. William was simply the caveman, and Ruth was his woman, and the deluge was reaching out for her. That he did not take her by the hair was because his grip on her body was sufficient. He knew that his strength, multiplied many times by terror and rage, was equal to any typhoon that ever came out of the China Sea.

The wind, as if realizing that both were about to escape, redoubled its fury, whirling the two of them around the corner as easily as gutter-winds whirl straws. Breathless, half blinded, he lay back against the deck-house. For a minute or two he was not conscious that he he d her in both his arms, so closely, indeed, that one mold might have served for them both. Presently, despite the fact that she was drenched, he sensed the pleasurable animal warmth of her body and the rapid rise and fall of her bosom. Strange fires sprang up in his heart; and one thought obliterated all others: come what might in after years, this moment would always be his.

His awakening from this dangerous dream was ​rude. The cave-woman was beating him with her fists, wild passion in every stroke.

"Let me go! I—can't—breathe! You are hurting me!"

He released her, though he retained hold of a forearm so powerfully that the marks of his fingers were visible for days.

The transition into the caveman period had been instantaneous, but it was not possible to recover except by slow degrees. So when he spoke to her he spoke consistently.

"Are you a fool? Didn't you know it was death? What in God's name were you about?"

"I had to come! It kept calling and calling! I couldn't help it! … How dare you call me a fool?" she blazed out.

"Well, if I ever saw one!"

"Let go my arm!"

"Not until I get you safe inside. You come with me."

She fought him all the way around to the smoke-room door. He opened it and pushed her roughly over the high threshold and followed.

"You have hurt me!"

"Sure I have. Hell! By rights you ought to be crumpled up without a whole bone in your body. One slip, one misstep. … Don't you know anything?"

"You have called me a fool."

"Uh-huh. You go below and change your clothes."

"You are insolent!"

​"Anything you please. Do you want me to carry you?"

All the fury she could crowd into her glance flew to his eyes. But she never spoke the words which stormed at her tongue. Something was forming in his eyes that reminded her of the morning in Venice. In another moment he would pick her up and carry her down-stairs. Angry as she was, she had not the courage to meet such an event.

She flung her hair out of her eyes, wrung it, made a loose knot of it, turned and staggered—for her body, minus the exaltation, weighed unutterable tons—into the main saloon. The door banged after her. She would never forgive him.

In these tremendous unforgetable moments both had broken through the shell of civilization. They were two human beings possessed of little more than instincts. A man revels in the recurrence of primordial instincts. No woman does, because she is afraid of instincts. Nature has warned her that these are traps.

Naturally Ruth was first to recover her poise, to resume her shell. She was honest enough later to make allowances for his roughness, urged by his terror for her safety. But she could not shut out the feel of his arms. As the shell closed over her in its entirety she was conscious of a great depression.

It was hours before William crawled back into his shell. He hated it; he knew it for just what it was—boundary lines, stone walls, moats. He had had a taste of such wonderful freedom that he ​never wanted to return to the shell. He knew that once he had it all buckled on again, he would review his conduct through the old microscopic lenses, which he did.

He had acted like an abysmal brute. He had hurt her; and things would never be the same as they had been. But her danger had driven him wild. And always the haunting memory of her body, warm and palpitating, against his. He thought of it as he dressed and tried to stamp out the thought. It was with him in the practically deserted dining-saloon, in the smoke-room later; it followed him back to his cabin, into his dreams, and it was with him in the morning when the storm was a thing of the past.

Calm returned; and the two picked up life where they had dropped it prior to the storm. By tacit agreement they never referred to the episode. Then they came to Ceylon, beautiful isle of spices; and the perverse little twist in their lives became forgotten.

One afternoon, after the return from Kandy, William went alone to the landing-pier in the harbor of Colombo. He saw the yacht Elsa in the offing.

CHAPTER XIX

SO the yacht Elsa had turned up at last? William eyed her gloomily and with hostile speculation. He could not deny that she was a thing of beauty among all the nondescript craft which dotted the harbor. How dingy the good old Ajax looked in the background, with her scarred plates, her peeling paint, her rusty anchor chains! Gulls were wheeling circles around her; lighters were thick under her ports; her booms were busy in the service of commerce. She looked like a great bumblebee which had fallen prey to an army of waterbugs. She would be carrying tea all the way to San Francisco. She had a place in the world, this homely Ajax; she was serving mankind honorably. William knew that he loved her. To him the ship had, since the storm, taken on a distinct personality ; she was something more than teak and steel, something more than an inanimate man-driven thing.

And what of the other, the sleek, handsome yacht, with her white enamel, her polished brass, her dazzling awnings? A plaything, a rich man's plaything. William was without envy; his philosophy accepted the fact that there would always be an unequal distribution of wealth; he had no ​socialistic ideas. But he hated the Elsa, not because she was beyond his possession or represented one of the higher forms of luxury: she was a little kingdom which, to a certain extent, was beyond the reach of man's laws, ruled by a scoundrel whose lightest whim, right or wrong, was the only law. He could not help wondering how many women had cried their hearts out, too late, behind those glistening ports.

For an hour or more he watched the launch which bobbed at the foot of the ladder. He hoped Camden or Colburton, or both, would come ashore. He would speak to them civilly; and if they accepted his warning. … But would words mean anything? What was he to either but scum underfoot? They would either lie easily or ignore him and pass on. If he fought them and beat them—which is what really appealed to his present mood—there would be the infernal British law again. Bombay, Calcutta, Rangoon, Singapore, Hong-Kong, all British ports; he was only a lone red-headed Irishman, while yonder man was a millionaire. It wouldn't be worth his while to beat them up and go to jail for it like a drunken sailor. He was literally surrounded by blind alleys.

They were following Ruth. There was nothing arguable about this conclusion. They had not given up the chase simply because they had failed to dispose of the only guardian the girl had. Colburton was rich; he had all the leisure in the world; he could abide his time.

William could understand certain phases of ​this ignoble pursuit. But what he could not understand was the persistence of it against the established fact that the girl was unwilling. He could not see where the zest of the chase came in under these conditions. To pursue something, some one, that loathed you and had made it patent to your face, suggested a mental make-up wholly beyond normal understanding. Hadn't that morning in Venice been conclusive? What more did the man want? Yet there he was, waiting patiently against the hour when he might safely strike. And how would he strike? From behind, in the dark?

If the girl was fool enough to cast her lot with a man like Colburton, why, there was nothing more to be said. You could not argue with a woman who put clothes and good times above her soul. You wasted your breath. But when the girl had looked into the pit at her feet and drawn back, when she had fled temptation, fought and conquered it, as he knew Ruth had. … Well, it was all past his understanding.

Without much difficulty he could fancy the girl's state of mind. She had failed in the work she loved; a little thing like nerves had barred her from fame and money. No doubt she had been desperate; and the devil always held a Colburton in reserve for this moment. But the innate good in her had won out. He never forgot the prayer; the memory of it was always coming back and filling his throat. Yet that black scoundrel did not intend to give her up!

​"To hell with the British jail!" William growled, shaking his fist toward the yacht. He would bump their heads together, come what might. A Cingalese boatman, his mouth and chin spattered with the juice of the betel-nut, hailed William eagerly.

"Sahib wants boat?"

"No. Clear out and don't bother me!"

The Cingalese grinned airily and moved on.

How long had the Elsa been in the harbor? When was she going to haul up her cables? This last he must know definitely. Was Colburton on board or ashore? This little puzzle was shortly straightened out for him. Three men came on to the pier. From their talk William assumed that they were officers in mufti. Servants trailed along behind, carrying huge kit-bags and many gun-cases.

"I call this luck! To make our station after a bit of good shooting, and to travel on a gem of a yacht like that!"

"Colburton is a good sort, the infernal lucky beggar! Didn't Chetwynd kill two black panthers up around Perak last spring? Ah, here comes the launch for us. We'll be able to pick up a few quid on the way. Colburton plays a rotten game of bridge, I understand."

Neither Camden nor Colburton was aboard the launch. William did not know whether he was relieved or sorry.

"What yacht is that?" he asked, casually, as the boatswain made fast.

​"Elsa, out of New York."

"Where's she bound?"

"Perak," said the boatswain, not very civilly.

This was welcome news to William. The Elsa would be out of the way for at least eight weeks. He could now go through India and Burma without looking over his shoulder every time he passed an alley after dark. What if the man had given up the chase? What if he had suddenly tired of the game? No; a man did not travel ten or twelve thousand miles without having made up his mind rather definitely. It was a temporary truce; William refused to deceive himself. He determined to lessen his vigilance in no respect.

He spoke to the boatswain again, prompted by the desire to throw a mild bomb into the enemy's camp. For the moment the gamin was in the ascendant.

"Say, you tell Mr. Colburton that Mr. Grogan says he hopes the worst will happen. Ye-ah." The boatswain stared at him in open-mouth amazement. "And you might add that if either he or Mr. Camden speaks to Miss Jones again, it 'll be a cot on the sunny side of the hospital—that is, if it turns out to be a doctor's job instead of an undertaker's. So long, Mary!"

A gamin, when he shoots his verbal bolt, tarries not for reply. His victory depends upon the last word. William turned and marched away, whistling cheerfully. Anyhow, the jackal and his master would understand that the brindle watch-dog was loose in the front yard o' nights.

​Then, too late, he realized that his gamin's instincts had betrayed him. Camden would now be on the watch for him. There would be no catching him unaware.

Next morning, when the tourists boarded the Ajax, William was very glad to note that the Elsa had cleared out early. What sister Ruth did not know she would not worry about. Not only was he going to play the watch-dog, but he was going to play it without her suspecting in the least. Only the Cumæan Sibyl could have picked a flaw in his gaiety that morning.

He romped with the children and played for them, jested and laughed with everybody, from the aloof missioners down to the little girl who had fallen in love with the chief officer; and all the while his Irish heart was heavy with a man's burden in which there were hopeless love, pain, and bewilderment of doubt, since what he really knew of Ruth's story was based on half-truths and suppositions. He did not care what she had done; his faith in her lay in what she had not done.

And on top of this, the missioner who had constituted himself a committee of one to regulate the morals of the tourists sequestered William that afternoon and mildly remonstrated with him as to his thoughtless conduct in regard to Miss Jones.

Whereupon William boiled over. "This is the second time you've spoken to me on this subject. If you didn't wear that kind of a collar and neck-tie I'd make that wrestling-match between Esau and the angel look like a frame-up!"

​"Mr. Grogan!"

"Ye-ah. What's your idea of a Christian, anyhow?"

"Mr. Grogan, my intentions—"

"Sure! Your intentions are the best in the world, but you come to me with the idea that mine aren't. That's what makes me kick. Can't a man be decent and clean, to your thinking, without crawling around on his hands and knees all day praying? You've been holding the club over Hottentots too long; you've lost track of white men."

"Never have I heard such language!"

"If you hang around me, you'll hear worse 'n that. Anyhow, it's about time you heard some real language. Everybody seems afraid of you, but I'm not. Miss Jones came on board unhappy; and it's none of your business nor mine what the cause was. People who aren't happy naturally don't go running around laughing and giggling; they like to be left alone. Just as the cobwebs are getting cleared up, you have to come along with this kind of a song and dance. She wanted somebody who could laugh and talk; she wasn't aching to hear sermons. This ship, according to your idea, is as bad as the front porch of a summer hotel. As a matter of fact, everybody seems to be enjoying themselves, everybody but you. If they put on airs at first, they soon got over it. They're all human and kindly. I know it because I can see. Where do you get the noise that because folks laugh frequently they must be bad?"

"Mr. Grogan, you misunderstand me!"

​"The trouble with you is you don't understand yourself. I haven't seen you crack a smile since we left New York. The world isn't as bad as all that. Of course, Miss Jones and I sit at the same table, in the same seats on trains, and go shopping together. Aren't we always with the bunch? Where's the harm? There's other parsons on board, and they have a good time like the rest of the folks. Isn't Miss Haines always tagging after the chief officer? Have you told her how wicked that is? Aw, piffle! Aren't all the young folks paired off in some innocent way? Is there anything unnatural about it? You need an oculist."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Grogan, that you look upon my good offices in this abrupt manner," said the missioner, with asperity. He rose from his chair.

"You ought to be shouting glad I didn't look at 'em from another roost. I guess the trouble with you is you want a scandal. You're yearning for one. You want to save something so bad that you'd be glad if something bad happened. You'd have started a riot on the Ark, believe me. Some folks are built that way. Anything good looks suspicious to 'em. Gee! I wish my old archeologists were back. They had whiter whiskers than you, and they saw good in everything, even me. I've nothing more to say for publication," William concluded.

He could see by the expression on the missioner's pale face that he had turned an officious meddler into a bitter enemy; but he did not care. His Jeremiade could lay as it fell.

​"Talking to me like that! I know what's the trouble with him. He sees things just the same as I do, but when they get into his head they begin walking backward."

Half an hour later he had forgotten the incident. The agile mind is generally nearer happiness than the plodding one; and William had the faculty of leaping mentally from one object to another, like a chamois. Ruth found him drawing pictures of elephants for the children.

"What are you drawing?" she asked.

"Elephants."

"Really?" She laughed.

"Sure." He extended a finished product. His ideas of anatomy were certainly wonderful to behold. Had such an elephant existed, every hunter in the world would have been scouring the jungles.

"Goodness! what is it?" she asked, holding the drawing flat, then endways, then upside down. "Oh, I see. It's Vesuvius."

"Aw! Say, kids, what is this picture?" he demanded, snatching back the drawing.

"Elephunt!" they shrieked.

"There, smarty!"

She sat down on the deck. "Let me draw one."

The children clamored about her shoulders and William craned his neck. With a few deft strokes a real elephant appeared; he had the right kind of ears, trunk, wrinkles, eyes.

"Oh, that's a real elephunt!" cried one of the children.

​And there's your child. They don't want real elephants, they want make-believes, for they live in a world of make-believe.

"We like Uncle Bill's elephants, 'cause they're so high up!"

"I see," replied Ruth, gravely. "You are all cubists. I didn't know that."

The children seized the two drawings and made off to exhibit them.

"You're as bad as they are," she laughed.

"Ain't they great? But they like my zebra best. All you have to do is to draw a donkey and send him to jail."

"You are always thinking of that elephant."

"Sure I am. If I don't ride an elephant between Bombay and Calcutta, it's going to break my heart. Ever since I was five I've been wanting to ride elephants. None of your zoo stuff, but the real article, howdahs with masonic aprons hanging down the sides, and W. G. embroidered with pearls, like the sleight-o'-hand fakers use in the vaudeville. Great! And now I'm going to tell you a secret. I've ordered the biggest, highest elephant in Jaipur."

"What?"

"Ye-ah. He'll be there at the station for us, and we'll have him all the way up to Amber and back, howdah and all."

"William Grogan, and after all my efforts to make you save your money!"

"'Sh! Here's the joke. It's the state elephant, and all it costs me is five dollars, including the ​howdah. It's first come, first served. They told me all about it back at Cook's in New York. And they say the elephant's as big as Jumbo. You and me and some of the kids—huh? Style? Believe me, nothing that ever walked around Coney will touch us."

Ruth smiled back into his eyes, but she was deep in wonder. It was utterly impossible to associate this boy with the caveman who had dragged her off the deck during the storm. The terrible strength of him when he was roused! There were marks upon her arm yet. She had been as a feather in his grasp. After all, it was easy to understand why the children loved him; he was a child whose body alone had grown up. His brain would never develop much beyond what it was. When all this wonderful journey was over he would return to his drain-pipes and bathtubs, his cravings satisfied. To have dreamed all his life of elephants and spangled howdahs! If that wasn't pure boy, what was? He was the kind children ran to and dogs fawned over.

She sighed. She, too, loved children. But they never put their soft little arms around her neck, because instinctively they sensed the repellence. She dared not soften toward them. There was nothing enigmatical in this attitude. She did not want the hidden depths in her soul stirred by the potent knowledge that never would she have children of her own. -She had failed in everything. And some day this boy would marry and settle down, and there would always be chil​dren around him, his children and his children's children.

This isn't a guide-book. It is eight months or more in the life of a young man who was vitally interested in living, who was making his boyhood dreams come true by the sheer force of will. If the fulfilment was not exactly in conformity with the conception, that was due to these unromantic times. If I attempted to chronicle all the things that happened to him, along with a complete itinerary of his travels, I should require the lease of another ninety-nine years.

His principal recollections of India were dung fires at night, tigers (in cages), apes, color, swarming people, and temples which resembled his bedroom windows on frosty winter mornings. Among other things, he arrived at that painful and critical moment when he must make his choice, eschew hotel labels or buy new suit-cases, there being no more room on those he had.

As for his dreams, he knocked down cocoanuts by hand and drank the milk; he picked tea-leaves, cardamon seeds, spices; he rode camels and donkeys; he passed through the tail end of a typhoon; and he rode from Jaipur to ancient Amber on the state elephant, howdah, spangles, and all.

In fact, he had a Durbar all by himself. The natives, upon beholding the huge pachyderm, rheumatic and disgruntled, decked out in all his giddy paraphernalia, concluded that some intimate friend of the British Raj was passing, and ​forthwith they beat their foreheads in the dust. If you should ask William, no doubt he will tell you that this was the greatest moment in his life.

Great dramatizations do not always get over; the lesson does not always stick in the mind; it is often crowded aside by the false importance of some triviality. Perversely the audience will seize upon the incident, and right away they will proceed to make the dramatist rich, when all he wanted was to be famous.

The drama in William's life was always overshadowed by that comic episode in Jaipur. The least thing stirred him into the telling of it.

He did not find his letter of credit at Rangoon. He was shown a cable, ostensibly written by himself in Aden, by which the letter had been forwarded to Bombay. A wire to Bombay elicited the surprising fact that his money was now on its way to Hong-Kong as per his further instructions dated Colombo. He knew that this bewildering tangle would be due to forgeries, but this knowledge did not help him solve his increasing financial difficulties. He cabled Hong-Kong the facts, however, and ordered them to hold the letter until he called personally for it with the letter of identification. He landed in Singapore with a little less than a hundred dollars. But he was confident that this sum would tide him over until he reached Hong-Kong. They were to stop only three days in Singapore.

He bore up cheerfully, but none the less he worried in secret. Cook's agents confessed that this ​was a new game to them and was beyond comprehension, since the man who was manipulating the letter's nomadic existence could not possibly benefit by it financially.

The yacht Elsa was not in the harbor of Singapore, and this fact lightened William's burden somewhat.

At four o'clock on the afternoon of the fourth day the Ajax would sail for Hong-Kong direct, as it was proposed to spend considerable time in China and Japan. Ruth went shopping with the two spinsters. She wanted a good supply of those delicious mangosteens. William, on his part, agreed to superintend the shipping aboard of two Canton grass lounges.

Coming on board just before sailing, he saw a bunch of mangosteens in her chair, and concluded that she had gone below to change. He himself elected to take a tubbing and don his new pongee suit. But when at dinner-time Ruth did not appear, he grew alarmed and sought her cabin. One of the spinsters answered his summons.

"Where is Miss Jones?" he asked.

"Isn't she on deck?"

"No. I can't find her." He hesitated. "Did she come on board with you?"

"Why, no. She met Mr. Camden, and the two went over to the markets for more fruit. … Mr. Grogan, what is the matter?"

Deathly white, William suddenly collapsed against the door-jamb.

"She … she has been left behind!"

CHAPTER XX

THAT night William Grogan went down into hell and remained there for ten days, every hour of which was a day in itself.

The captain was dreadfully sorry, but he could not turn back. Once the Ajax set her forefoot toward the open sea, she had to go on. She was like fate: nothing could swerve her from her course save an act of God. Who first laid down this immutable sea-law that a ship must never turn back? No one seems to know. If a fire breaks out in the hold, they fight it ; they send out calls for help; but they do not turn back, save in rare instances; they keep plowing on.

"God knows I'm sorry, lad; but we dropped our pilot two hours back, and I could not turn around if I wanted to. If what you say is true, there's only one thing to do. Send a wireless to the American consul-general, state all the facts, and have patience."

"Patience? My God! and she left all her money with me!"

"You write the wireless and I'll sign it," said the captain, gently. This young chap's misery went to his heart. "The consul-general will ​watch out for her. She'll report there the moment she learns she's missed the boat."

"Can't I make you understand? She's been abducted! Haven't I told you the whole story?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't turn back. Write your wireless. Tell the consul-general to notify the police. If your fears have any real grounds, the police dragnet will bring out the facts. Keep your head. Lots of people miss boats, and nothing serious happens. Besides, I've traveled too many seas not to know a gentleman when I see him. You've misjudged this man Camden."

"Hell! didn't he fool me for weeks? Can't you speak the first ship going west and let me tranship?" William begged.

"I could do that; but we'll meet no steamer going west. We'll make Hong-Kong on Wednesday morning, though, and you can pick up the German-Lloyder which is scheduled to leave that same night. A matter of ten days, and you'll be in Singapore yourself."

"Ten days! She may be dead or … or worse! My God, or worse! They'll be off with her in that yacht!"

"Mention it in the wireless. Come, I'll go with you. I'll do everything I humanly can for you, except turn back."

"Poor, love-lorn devil!" thought the captain. The girl was all right. Men weren't such fools as to pursue in this fashion. Still, it was natural that, being deeply in love, William should imagine all these horrible calamities. The girl was prob​ably at this moment comfortably arranging her affairs at Raffles, or was at the cable office, awaiting the message she knew would come.

The long wireless was despatched, and around nine o'clock came the reply. It stated briefly that the consul-general had seen nothing of Miss Warren (for William had given Ruth's real name), that there was no yacht named Elsa in the harbor, that no one by the name of Colburton or Camden was registered at any of the hotels, that the police machinery had been set in motion, and that as soon as the consul-general heard of Miss Warren's whereabouts a wire would be sent.

"Can't you see now?" cried William. "She hasn't turned up; they can't find her. I tell you she's been abducted!"

The wireless had dissipated a good deal of the captain's confidence. "But white men!"

"Haven't I been hammering at you that only their skins are white? But, by Heaven! they'll be whiter when I meet up with them, damn them!"

"Not so loud, not so loud!" warned the captain. "Buck up! There's only one thing you can do, Mr. Grogan, and that's to wait. Make up your mind to that. And don't let the ship see how you take it."

"A lot I care what they think!" said William.

So he settled down to wait, and joined that body of miserables who are individually designated Tantalus and Prometheus, only it was time the gods dangled before his eyes, while the eagle tore at his heart.

​All night William wandered up and down the decks. But for the ability to ease the pressure by sighs, his heart must have cracked. Whether his eyes were open or closed, he could not shut out the infernal picture. No matter where he looked into the night, he saw her terrified face, he heard her cries, saw her outstretched hands. He saw the man laugh as she struggled in his arms, her hair down, her dress torn at the throat. … She was calling, and he could not go to her!

If only he had warned her about Camden! He had let her walk straight into the trap. It was all his fault. He should have told her; and all the time he had believed he was saving her needless worry! He had lived straight, he had lived clean, he had acted honorably all his life; and yet God could shoot this bolt into his heart, mercilessly! He could not understand it. It wasn't a square deal.

Round and round the deck-houses he walked, mile after mile. He was unconscious of time or place. Every half-hour he visited the wireless man; but there was always the same answer to his inquiries—nothing. By and by he began to see her as day by day he had seen her, his school-teacher! She was reading or sewing or chatting, and once she was lying in his arms, drenched, her hair blowing into his face, her heart beating against his. And there she was, back yonder, calling, calling; and he couldn't go to her!

Each step he took said, "Hurry, hurry!" Would dawn never come? Hurry, hurry! Never ​had the Ajax moved so slowly through the water. When the gray east became suddenly slashed with crimson and gold, when the Oriental sun burst over the horizon, it did not mean to him that another day was come; it signified that he was a little nearer, just a little nearer.

He did not sleep ten hours during the voyage around to Hong-Kong. The doctor secretly drugged him, fearful that he might develop brain fever. The drug served to deaden his mind for a little while, but the doctor could not get him off his feet. He walked without sense of locomotion, mechanically, and, like a sleep-walker, continually bumped into passing objects. When he wasn't walking he was bending over the cutwater. He never saw the flying-fish, the porpoise, or the brilliant phosphorescence at night. He saw only so much water being left behind.

Once a day a wireless was received. It consisted invariably of two words—"No information."

Of course the gist of the story became ship's talk; but they were all very kind, and they encouraged him whenever they had a chance. But the kindest thing they did was to leave him alone. The children followed him about dumbly; he no longer knew how to play with them.

If a woman mysteriously disappears, rarely is she given the benefit of a doubt. The majority of those who knew her are first to dip into the black paint. It is not a question of charity or meanness—simply that it is human nature to ​judge and condemn whenever the defendant is absent from court. Ruth had been carrying on a secret intrigue with Camden and had run away with him. It was all very simple; but nobody must tell that poor distracted Irishman; the only kindness they could offer him was to let him find out the truth for himself.

No Apache Indian, in his most diabolical frenzy, ever conceived tortures equal to those William planned to mete out to Colburton and Camden. He drove nails into their hands and feet; crucified them; he put out their eyes and let them go; he tied them together and threw fangless cobras into the room and watched them go mad from terror; he buried them in the sand and put food and water beside them and stayed by until they died; he drove them naked into one of those terrible ant-hills; or he broke their legs and arms with his bare hands and disfigured them.

Perhaps it was all very horrible and primitive, but its true significance might bear investigation. No man is worthy the name of manhood who would not plan such reprisals under such conditions. There are certain evils for which men do not go into court for their remedies. Nature demands that they shall take the law into their own hands and be accountable to God alone.

The thought of burying his two hands into the flesh of those men did much toward keeping William's mental balance from toppling. The doctor followed him about a good deal, but never attempted to calm or soothe him when he burst ​forth into these frenzied flights. The doctor was wise, and he had a fairly good idea of the hell William was passing through. The night before arriving at Hong-Kong he spoke decidedly to the captain, who had gone over to the majority with his opinion.

"On my soul, I believe Grogan has the right of it. I can spot a good woman when I see one."

"We all believe we're able to do that," said the captain, dryly.

"Well, you and I have jogged up and down these seas long enough to know that in the East men do things they would not dream of doing over in the West. There's something in the damned lazy, good-for-nothing air that puts a sag in the moral fiber. Camden, I know, was a periodical champagne drunkard. I helped jack him up one morning. You know what booze does over here. Well, I hope to God the Irishman finds him; and, more than that, I'd give a year's pay to be sitting in a front seat."

The captain smoked on, offering no comment.

"The psychology of love is the most interesting thing I know of. The lad has never breathed a word to the girl," continued the doctor. "Felt that he wasn't good enough for her. Oh, he's told me everything by degrees. Used to watch her go past his cellar window, and never saw her face until she came aboard. And he's going through this hell not because he has any hope of winning her—which isn't likely if you've taken the trouble to watch her as I have—but because he's got to go ​through it. The girl's a genius at the piano." The captain nodded. "Now, people who have real genius don't give a hang what the neighbors say. If there had been anything between her and Camden, she'd have made no bones about it. She'd have taken her luggage, told Grogan frankly, and walked off the ship. You and the others can believe what you like; I'm for Grogan's way of thinking. There's been a low deal somewhere. And I've a feeling that the Irishman is going to meet up with the rogues."

William had a hundred and fifty dollars when he landed in Hong-Kong. The Ajax's purser had bought in the remainder of William's ticket. It was not obligatory; it was merely an act of kindness. There wasn't a man or woman on board—the meddling missioner having dropped out at Calcutta—who wasn't in sympathy with this deep-freckled, blue-eyed, red-headed Irishman, and who was not sorry to see him depart.

He had his luggage and Ruth's transhipped to the German boat, which sailed for Singapore after sundown. He choked as he saw the cheerful lights of the Ajax sink below the horizon. It was possible that he would never again set eyes upon that good old ship, and only by the merest chance would any of the tourists cross his path again. He was all alone. And Ruth might be dead … or worse!

He was traveling second-class, and at nine he went down to his stuffy cabin astern. He sat on the edge of his bunk and fingered the Greek ​hand-bag he had bought for Ruth in Athens. Next he laid out the balance of his money; it was not much.

Suddenly he sprang to his feet, drew a hand across his forehead, and sat down again, very sick and very limp. He had forgotten to go for his letter of credit! And no cable would bring it to him, since he had given orders to surrender it only to himself in person. He guessed God had really forsaken him. To face he knew not what labors with less than seventy dollars, when every move would require money, and still more money! He had had nearly a whole day, and like a fool he had wandered up and down the water-front to pass the time.

He did not brood overlong. The thing was done, and it was useless to rail over his forgetfuless. He was weak and stale. The mental worry had visibly worn him down in the flesh. Being without money, he would have to have new blood. So he set to work methodically, eating a good deal of meat and exercising faithfully in the gymnasium.

He got into Singapore in the morning, and went at once to the consulate. Nothing had been heard of Miss Warren. The yacht Elsa had not put in an appearance. (No one had thought to look for the yacht over back of the island, near Rharu, on the mainland. From that point to Singapore was a matter of twenty-odd minutes by rail.) The consul-general was a little skeptical regarding William's tale, but he offered all the aid he had in ​his power. He suggested that he personally write Hong-Kong the circumstances, and, if that did not bring the letter of credit, to cable Leipzig, the home office of the bankers. Until that question was settled definitely he would act as banker to Mr. Grogan up to the sum of two hundred dollars.

Fortified in this manner, William sallied forth blindly. He went to all the hotels and questioned everybody, even the Chinese boys, but without success. The spinsters had seen Camden, so the yacht must be in hiding somewhere. (Neither he nor the police thought to extend their inquiries to the officers' club.) William searched the bars and billiard-rooms, still unsuccessfully. But the gods were pulling him out of Tartarus and the eagle was about to soar aloft.

At half past nine that first night he went into the open cafe of Raffles Hotel and saw Camden, seated before a bottle of wine. William stood perfectly still. He wanted all vertigo out of his head before he acted. Presently he saw Camden take a soiled chamois bag from an inside pocket, open the neck and peer into it. William recognized that chamois bag. Camden set the bag on the table and tilted the champagne-bottle.

William walked over, swept the chamois bag into his own pocket, and sat down.

The bottle slipped from Camden's hand and smashed upon the stone flooring. The wine seethed and ran about his feet.

"Camden, there's murder in me to-night. I ​don't want to kill you. Write down where she is and write it straight, for if you don't I'll kill you. There won't be any jiu-jitsu to-night. Write it down." William pushed a slip of paper and a pencil across the table. "Give it to me straight. I'm not afraid of anything or anybody to-night."

Camden was actually hypnotized. Slowly he wrote across the face of the slip of paper. Grogan!

As William reached for the address, Camden awoke to the realization that he had been hypnotized. He picked up his glass, ostensibly to drink; instead, with a deft turn of the wrist he dashed the wine toward William's eyes, hoping to retrieve the chamois bag and escape.

But William was abnormally alert. He anticipated the movement, ducked in time, and before Camden's arm had reached the full stretch of the treacherous fling William struck. The blow hit Camden squarely in the face, and he crumpled up and lay quietly in the puddle of wine.

William caught up the address. He gazed about coolly. At one end of the veranda were some ladies and gentlemen chatting over late coffee. None of them moved; they were obeying the Oriental axiom—keep out of the other man's muddle if you can. William stirred Camden with his foot and the man rolled over on his back.

"I guess you won't be pretty to look at for a long time to come," was William's sole comment.

And now for the jackal's master! He walked hurriedly toward the street. He did not bother to engage a rickshaw. He knew the way, even ​if a bit hazily. Malay Street, where the Scarlet Woman plied her ancient business! Malay Street! God! and they had locked her up in one of those hell-holes—white men! The street with the big numbers painted on Chinese lanterns!—Malay Street! And only a short time before they had all driven through it on a lark!

He broke into a run, zigzagging in and out of the crowds, up this street and down that, through the quaint Chinese quarters, until he finally came out into the sinister thoroughfare.

It required but a moment or two to locate the house. If Camden had lied he would go back and kill him. He rushed into the hallway. The front doors are rarely locked in this street. A gross-bodied woman opposed him with a snarl, demanding what he meant by such conduct. He caught her by the shoulders and swung her around brutally.

"Listen to me! What room is she in, the young woman they forced in here about ten days ago? No lies, or I'll break your neck. Give me the room!" He shook her violently. Her head wabbled like a manikin's.

"Twelve!" The word shot out of her mouth in a kind of gurgle.

William flung her against the wall and sprang up the stairs. The air was vile with the smell of cheap whisky and cigarettes. From the parlor came the pan-like tinkle of a mechanical piano. He reached the upper floor and stooped before the first door. It was number ten. Two doors ​farther on he stooped again and cautiously tried the door. It was not locked. He opened it and stepped into the room noiselessly.

He saw a strange tableau. Rutn was standing behind the bed, her hair down as he had seen those dreadful nights on board the Ajax. One of her sleeves was gone, and there were drab bruises on the golden skin. Her lips were bleeding slightly. Not far from the bed stood Colburton. He had a smile on his face; it had frozen there. Down both cheeks were livid welts, the marks of fingernails. The girl had evidently given a good account of herself.

"Has … has he hurt you, sister?" asked William, his tongue hot and dry against his palate.

"Not very much. But I think God has sent you … along in time."

William turned upon the man with the frozen smile.

CHAPTER XXI

RUTH'S abduction had not offered any great obstacles or difficulties. It required principally a certain amount of patience, and Camden could mark time with any man. The whole affair depended upon her isolation from the alert protectorate of the Irishman. And when Camden's spy reported that Ruth had gone into the markets without William, he acted at once.

The supreme irony lay in William's silence regarding his discoveries. Had he confided in Ruth, she would not have greeted Camden as an old friend or stepped into the rickshaw he had provided for her. That William suspected anything was furthest from his thoughts. For the boatswain, for some reason known to himself, had not repeated his conversation with William.

Thus, when the jackal approached Ruth he did so confidently, and naturally there was nothing in her attitude to disturb this confidence. Indeed, she greeted him cordially. Where had he been? How long had he been in Singapore? And where was he going from there? The Ajax was sailing in about an hour, and she had been hunting the Chinese markets for mangosteens. She exhibited a meager dozen of the luscious fruit, each pendent ​from a long fiber thread much used by the Chinese fruit-sellers.

"Pshaw!" said Camden. "I wish you'd let me guide you into the markets again. I know where you can get bushels of the fruit for almost nothing."

"How long will it take?" she asked, eagerly.

"A quarter of an hour at the longest."

So Ruth handed her mangosteens to the spinsters, took Camden's rickshaw while he engaged another, and the two of them wheeled away. Now Ruth possessed a good idea of locality; and it presently occurred to her that her rickshaw boy was not going in the direction of the markets, which lay eastward. She touched the boy on the shoulder with her sunshade. Instead of turning his head to inquire what she wished, he broke into the full run which is almost as fast as a horse ordinarily trots. He would be able to maintain this gait for an hour or more. The Chinese in Singapore are the sturdiest in the world.

Ruth became alarmed. The boy was patently running away with her. She looked back to find that Camden had stopped and was arguing furiously with his boy. Next she saw him jump from the rickshaw and run after her. He stumbled and fell, and by the time he was on his feet again there was no possible chance of his overtaking her. He stood in the middle of the dusty road, apparently bewildered and undecided; and this picture was the last she ever saw of him, for her boy shot up a side street. All this was very good acting ​on Camden's part. If the abduction turned out abortive, Ruth would retain the impression of his efforts to come to her assistance and he would be free to act again.

Ruth began to beat the rickshaw boy lustily; in fact, she broke her sunshade over his head and shoulders without obtaining the least satisfaction. Not having even a shadowy idea of what was meant by this peculiar conduct of the boy, a mild coma laid hold of her. The reality became a disordered dream. What was left of the cover of her sunshade flapped in the rushing wind, and the broken ribs beat a thin tattoo on the thills of the rickshaw. She might easily have slipped over the back of the vehicle, but the idea never occurred to her until too late to serve.

It was now half after three, and the Ajax sailed at four! Still she sat there motionless, staring stupidly at the broad, yellow, heaving back of the Chinaman. Scarcer grew the houses and bungalows; they were leaving the town behind. Once she saw a Sikh policeman; but she never thought to raise her arms to attract his attention.

About half an hour later the boy stopped in front of what appeared to be a low native tavern. It stood back from the road in the shade of some bamboos. Both Malays and Chinese were grouped about on the veranda, some smoking and others drinking tea.

She jumped from the rickshaw and attempted to run, but her legs were too numb. The rickshaw boy laughed silently, grasped her by the arms, and ​propelled her irresistibly into the tavern, where he calmly locked her up in a room whose walls were lined with tousled bunks, beside which stood small stands littered with the paraphernalia of the opium-smoker.

A sound, coming from far off, cleared the stupor out of her head. It was the bassoon-like whistle of the Ajax. She was being left behind! She ran to the door, shook the knob, beat upon the panels until her knuckles began to bleed. Left behind! What did it mean? What could it mean? The rickshaw boy had not taken her hand-bag or purse. He had simply run away with her and locked her up. The motive was not robbery. She groped into a thousand channels for some clue to this amazing adventure, but there was no solution anywhere. She was being left behind, and almost penniless. It was maddening!

Some time after sunset they came for her, a huge Chinaman and a slim, lithe Malay. They robbed her of her hand-bag and purse. The Chinaman thrust his hand down her neck and tore loose the chamois bag. They then proceeded to bind her hands behind her back. Cloths were tied over her eyes and mouth. She submitted passively; she had sense enough to appreciate the utter folly of struggling. The Chinaman swung her over his shoulder and trotted down-stairs. Presently she knew that she was being put into a closed carriage.

She was in a peculiar state of mind. She dared not think; she must let herself drift, drift; that, or go mad with anxiety. She even tried to con​vince herself that she was acting in a moving-picture drama of some kind. She forced these pictures into her thoughts, and others; she called up reserve after reserve, but they were not strong enough for the onslaughts of terror. What were they going to do with her? Where were they taking her? What did it all mean?

The ride took something more than an hour. There was at no time any indication that her captors were in a hurry. The horse jogged along. When the carriage came to the final halt there was a wait of four or five minutes. Then she felt the muscular arms of the Chinaman again. She was being carried into a house. The air was strong with the stale smoke of Turkish cigarettes.

"Take her up to room twelve." It was a woman's voice. "I'll send Saki San up with food later."

A few minutes after Ruth was set down and the knots at her wrists were loosened. A door closed and a key turned in the lock. She dragged her hands free and tore off the bandages. It was dark, but she knew that she was in a bedroom.

There were two windows, rear and side. The one in the rear overlooked a small back yard in the center of which stood a kind of outhouse. A Chinaman was lounging in the doorway, smoking his little metal pipe. Behind him other Chinese moved in a film of blue vapor.

The side window was less than six feet from the next house. She stared into the velvet blackness of the window opposite. Even as she gazed a ​match flared. Soon a candle flickered and revealed a woman in a low-necked dress. A dead cigarette hung pendent from her lips. A shadow passed between her and the light. The shadow was a man. The woman drew the shade.

Ruth leaned against the casing of her window; she was sick with horror. She had no illusions regarding yonder brief picture. A monstrous faintness threatened her, but she clung to her senses desperately. All the strength, all the cunning and invention God had given her she would need.

She took off her hat—a pith helmet—and hid the two steel hat-pins in the side of her skirt where she could reach them handily. Then she sought the door, but without hope. As she expected, it was locked on the outside. There was no inside bolt. She could not get out, but any one could get in.

She returned to the side window. By pressing her cheek closely to the left wall she was able to secure a glimpse of the street in which the house stood. Across the way she saw a huge Chinese lantern swaying in the mild night wind. Upon this lantern was a rudely painted number.

She heard footsteps in the hall, and she stepped back behind the bed, into the corner. The door opened and a gross woman, with thick, dry, blond hair and deeply rouged cheeks, entered with an oil-lamp. She peered around the room until she discovered Ruth. Then she set the lamp on a stand in the far corner.

​"Nobody's going to hurt you," said the woman, indifferently. "Have you any idea where you are?"

"Yes."

"Oh. Well, it's Malay Street, all right. Now, don't waste your breath calling out. When there's no tourists in town, the Sikh police don't bother to watch us carefully. And if they do hear you they'll think it's the usual racket. If you're sensible you'll be allowed the freedom of this bedroom. If you kick up, why, I'll have to tie you. You needn't look so scared. You won't see any men, if that's worrying you."

"Are you an American?"

"There's no nationality in this business," said the woman, shrugging. "And don't waste your breath asking questions. They won't be answered."

"How … how long are you going to keep me here? I have no money."

"I don't know how long. That depends upon you. When they come for you you'll find out what you want to know. I'll send food up to you. But no nonsense. It won't do you a bit of good."

"Do you want money?"

"You've just told me you hadn't any."

The woman went out, shut the door, and locked it. Ruth sat down on the bed, fingering the glass heads of her hat-pins. If any one so much as touched her, she would strike to kill. If only her body would cease its idiotic trembling! … They! Who were they who would come for her?

​Her hell began about the same time as William's, and there was but little difference in character. The sum was terror and suspense.

Not in the slightest way did Ruth associate Camden with her dreadful plight. She was positive that even now he was sending out alarms. Nor did Colburton enter her thoughts. She had reached the opinion that, sensibly recognizing the uselessness of pursuing her, he had gone back to New York.

She had often heard and read of the moral lawlessness of white men in the Far East. Some vile scoundrel had noticed her in the streets. Well, she could die.

After a while she slid to her knees and prayed.

The prayer was interrupted by the door opening again. She sprang up defensively. But the new-comer was only a pretty little Japanese girl with a tray upon which lay toast, fruit, and tea. She set the tray down on the center-table and courtesied cheerfully.

"I spig you lig English," she said, which Ruth readily interpreted as "I speak English like you."

"Do you like money?" asked Ruth.

"Umhm. I lig make mo-nee."

"Will you go to the American consulate and tell them Miss Warren is here? They will make you rich."

The Japanese girl laid her finger on her lips and nodded toward the door. This gesture conveyed to Ruth that some one was on guard outside in the hall, the blond woman probably.

​"No can do. She keel me I spig outside. No can do. I lig you. You no same's oth' women." Saki San approached Ruth and inspected her with that frank and childish curiosity of the Japanese. She giggled. "Velly nice. I come topside two time day. Tea? Coffee?"

As Ruth did not answer, she bobbed up and down several times. Then she went to the door in that slipshod manner which is charming in the Orient and slovenly elsewhere.

Ruth sat up in a chair all night, and toward morning she fell asleep from exhaustion. So long as she remained a prisoner in this room she was determined not to sleep at night or to undress. She was not wholly ignorant of this phase of life, and resolved to steal what sleep she could during the day. There was always something in the newspapers; and she recalled that life among these outcasts began at sundown and ended at sunrise.

The first day was very hot and very quiet. It rained a little. It is always raining a little in Singapore.

There were combs and brushes on the bureau, but she did not touch them, much as she longed to.

Her breakfast consisted of eggs, tea, and toast. She was not hungry, but she knew that only by eating could she keep her strength.

The little Japanese girl, who was really as pretty as a doll, noticed the snarled and tumbled hair of the prisoner. When she came in with the evening meal she carried a new brush and comb.

"These new. Chinaman buy 'em shop over ​town. Belong you. Me Saki San. Me comb hair?"

Ruth could not help smiling. Impulsively she gave the brush and comb to Saki San and sat down in a chair. The Japanese girl fussed over her for an hour, and somehow her touch soothed the raw nerves. But Saki San would not talk. She never brought into this room any of the secrets of the house.

"You sleep night?"

Ruth did not know whether to say yes or no. It might be a trap. She compromised by shrugging.

"You sleep day. Watch night. Maybe so no man catch um sleep." Saki San did not smile as she offered this advice. "Hon'able lady un'stan'?"

"Yes."

Saki San, which was a nickname, knew absolutely nothing about morals. From her point of view the life she lived was proper, if arduous. Her parents away off in Saki, Japan, owed money and regularly she sent home half of her eranings. But instinctively she did know that this strange, beautiful white woman saw things differently.

Saki San had known many white women. They cried a good deal when alone, drank deeply, used all manner of drugs, and sometimes prayed wildly to a strange God Saki San had never heard of until the white man took her from the segregated district in Tokio and eventually left her here in Singapore. For two years now she had been com​panion to these white women who called themselves lost. She could not understand what that word meant unless it was that they could not find their way back home.

Four days dragged themselves by. There was scarce an hour in which Ruth did not think of her Irishman. Oh, he would not forsake her; he would find her. But he must hurry! hurry! Her whimsical blue-eyed Irishman, tender and thoughtful and kind! What if he did lack polish? His mind was crystal and his heart was gold; and he wore his cynicism as a chestnut wears its mistletoe, a false growth grafted upon him without his leave; whom children loved and old men grew fond of. No, he would not forsake her.

CHAPTER XXII

ONE afternoon, toward dusk the fifth day of her captivity—Retrospection seized her and whirled her away in his purple chariot.

Retrospection, who is one of the unmentioned gods of tragedy, is never very particular about his backgrounds; Persian, Axminster or rag carpet, palace or hovel, little he cares; to him the play's the thing. Upon this occasion he set the disembodied spirit of Ruth in a furnished room, neat and comfortable, one flight up, in a genteel boarding-house in Washington Square. The scene would not have impressed the adventurous, consisting as it did of a lone young woman (who Ruth recognized as herself) feverishly packing a suit-case. When she had locked and strapped it she sat down upon a trunk near by, panting and disheveled. Her figure was slender yet shapely, the contours ripe; there was nothing out of the ordinary about it; indeed, the mold was common to nine-tenths of American women. It was by her face, perhaps, that one might distinguish her from the ruck of millions, the commonplace. It was not beautiful, but it was singularly attractive.

She drew her sleeve across her damp forehead, flushed by her exertions, for it was the evening of a ​long, hot summer day. The pavements were throwing off the heat they had absorbed; and what little breeze came in through the open windows was tainted by the smell of water and dust and asphalt, and burdened with the thousand changeable, indescribable sounds of mechanisms, the voices of a great city.

From somewhere came the whining, discordant music of a hand-organ; and the young woman knew that near it happy, barelegged children were dancing. Children! There are some words which, when called into being, seem instantly to clothe themselves with bristling, stabbing points. The young woman winced. She who loved children, who was peculiarly familiar with the bewildering facets of their budding characters, she had forgotten them. What a horror she was to herself!

She flung up her head, slid from the trunk, snatched her hat from the bed, and put it on without so much as a glance into the mirror, which, in a young and comely woman, registers the sign that she is under some great emotional strain. She had made her calculations in cold blood; there was not even the shadow of love in her heart. Ah, if only love had swayed her, human and beautiful love, which gives everything and asks for nothing!

She crossed over to the bureau drawers, which were all out, and once again looked through them. Then she sought one of the windows and leaned against the casement. Each time she heard the ​ring of horse-shoes upon the asphalt she peered out eagerly, only to withdraw her head in disappointment.

"Why does he not hurry?"

It was twenty minutes past seven. If she was not out of the house before eight she was as good as lost. She shut her hands tightly and her teeth clicked. There was something in the tenseness of her expression that suggested she was throwing out her will, taking up invisibly a whip and beating the flanks of a jaded horse. A dray rumbled by; a taxicab sputtered noisily under the shadowy arch; a huckster's cart rattled eastward; and still the man did not come. Everything seemed to be fighting against her.

A tap sounded upon the panel of the door. She wheeled quickly, but remained where she was, undecided. The tap came again, with a little more emphasis. The girl cleared her throat.

"Come in."

The door opened.

"Oh, it is you, Mrs. Oliver!"

"Why, what's all this?" demanded the landlady, indicating the trunk and suit-case and the denuded walls.

"I am leaving in a few minutes. The rent of the piano has been paid to date. They will come for it to-morrow."

"Leaving? What in the world has happened?"

"I wish I could tell you, but I can't. I have lived three years in this room, and you have all been very good to me."

​"But I don't understand! Child, you are all alone, and I couldn't love you more if you were my own. Tell me what has happened and maybe I can help."

"Dear Mrs. Oliver, the only help is what I must give myself."

"You are running away to get married?"

"Do I look like it? No. I am running away from … myself! Please don't ask me questions. I should only lie to you. My determination is irrevocable. Some day I'll come back and tell you."

"You leave me with grave and terrible doubts," said the landlady in a troubled voice.

"Mrs. Oliver!"

"Well, this is life; this is a big and wicked city; I am old, and I know. You are young and pretty and alone." The landlady's motherhood, which was as comprehending as it was deep, yearned toward this girl, who had always remained aloof. The brood she gathered under her wing was composed of struggling artists and writers, but yonder chick had been hatched from a strange egg. "You can't tell me what the trouble is?"

"No." The girl turned quickly toward the window. Once more came the beat of iron shoes. A baggage-cart stopped at the curb. "The man for my things. I thought he never would come." She walked toward the door. The landlady stepped aside. The girl whirled unexpectedly and flung her arms around the surprised landlady and kissed her. "You have been so good to me! ​Good-by!" She flew out into the hall and down the stairs. "You will find a trunk and suit-case up-stairs. Please hurry," she said to the cart-man, whom she met coming up the steps.

"All right, miss."

"I'll ride with you and give you the directions."

The man nodded. Five minutes later he got up beside his passenger and flicked the horse with a broken whip.

The girl looked up at the window. She saw the bulky figure of the landlady in silhouette, and a hard lump came into her throat. She had never been happy in that room, but sometimes she had known content.

Beautiful old square, so brave in history, once so brilliant in fashion, shunted to one side like a plaything which no longer amused the grown-up child called New York. It was only now, when she was going to leave it, that she realized how much she loved every stone of it. The electric lamps were blurred and the blue lances, grotesquely broken, danced absurdly. She knew that she was gazing through tears.

She focused her gaze upon the drooping head of the horse, and for a long time refused to look right or left. Shiffle-shuffle, shiffle-shuffle went the iron shoes. One was loose. She could hear the clink of it each time the animal lifted the hoof.

"Muggy weather," volunteered the cartman. "Th' ol' nag 'ain't got much gumption t'night."

She did not reply. She heard the sound of his voice, but the words fell meaningless against the ​stone wall around her thoughts. She was a weak and contemptible thing, no better than the painted woman in the street. Did one inherit moral as well as physical characteristics? Were there such things as sixteenths, thirty-seconds, sixty-fourths handed down from generation to generation? Was she merely a fractional reincarnation of her mother, who had run away from her father upon the plea of loneliness and neglect? She had been nine then; five years later, beaten, broken, dying, the mother had returned. And this wasn't lesson enough!

Her father! She thought of him with a tender smile. The poor benign dreamer, forever delving into scientific research, in the world but not of it, scarcely realizing that his wife had forsaken him, that he had a child to bring up! He had taken back the mother without a word of reproach, and an hour later the doctor had found him puttering among his retorts. Loneliness and neglect that had been her mother's excuse, and with some justice. But what excuse had she, her mother's daughter?

"It 'll take half an hour, miss."

"Don't hurry the poor horse," she replied, mechanically.

The cartman shifted his quid and spat surreptitiously, concluding that his customer had been turned out for not paying her rent. It was no new story to him. Somebody was always moving, because it was cheaper to move than whack down the rent. Well, it was all grist to his mill; he ​had no preference. She was pretty; and generally it was the pretty ones who moved.

Two blocks farther on, before a house in one of the numbered streets, he drew up.

"Is this the place?"

"Yes."

She climbed down, ran up the steps, and rang the bell. The door opened shortly and she vanished into the hall. When the cartman laid the suit-case on top of the trunk he suggested that he wouldn't mind an extra ten cents for beer. It took "all th' water out o' yer hide, this weather."

He pocketed the tip and shuffled out of the house, out of her life, one of those shadow shapes which come and go without leaving the slightest impression on the memory.

The girl stood stock-still in the middle of the room until she heard the shiffle-shuffle of the poor old bag of bones that had once been a lively colt in the green fields. Into her tragic thoughts came strangely the thought of this horse. She had already forgotten the master, but she would always remember the horse. It was symbolical. Twenty years hence she would be like that, a bag of bones, all her spirit crushed, gray-haired, weak of eye, trembling. How distinct the dull portrait was!

All her life she had been poor; always she had grubbed. She had been denied the right of butterflies—to fly. Always they had been in debt. She had grown to dread the door-bell, for nine-tenths of the callers had been irascible bill-collectors, and the brunt of "shooing" them off ​had always fallen upon her young shoulders. Her father had no idea where his salary went. She had cooked the meals, washed the dishes, kept the house in order. The social life of the college town had been closed doors to her. The boys had naturally sought, with the careless cruelty of their kind, those girls who had pretty dresses, leisure, and who knew how to dance. What was it to them that she could play the Second Symphony if, on the other hand, she did not know the latest ragtime? She was pretty; but her hands were always red from housework and her dresses made-overs. Only two things had she plucked from this dreary life—education and music—and these haphazardly, due primarily to the kindness of the German professor of music, who loved the father and understood the child.

And then one day she had been thrown upon her own resources, unceremoniously, by death. When the little estate was settled up, the trifling insurance paid, the furniture sold, and the debts wiped out, there was for her a meager nine hundred dollars to begin the real battle of life with.

She hated the small city where she had known nothing but penury and humiliation, and so went to the metropolis.

For ten years she had studied under the loving care of the old Bavarian music-master, who, back in Munich, had ranked among the greatest instructors of his time. Finding himself too deeply involved in political intrigue, he had stolen away to America. He had discovered the soul in Ruth, ​and she became all his ambitions in one. His own peculiar genius had fired hers, even when she was a child, unconscious of what was stirring within. He drew wonderful pictures for her. At the end of the road were wealth and fame.

To possess genius and yet to fail in attainment because of a trifling physical defect called nerves! She could not play before an audience; she could not even accompany a singer with any success. Yet, in a manager's office, all the yearning, all the poetry and romance in her soul, flooded her finger-tips. To hear the applause of the multitudes, to walk and live among the great, to be indeed one of them, to taste the sweetest fruit in life, real success! In the manager's office, prior to her last and complete failure, she met Norton Colburton.

Meantime, during her trials, she had tried clerkship in the big shops, given music-lessons, and by qualification and the assistance of her fathers late confrères she had eventually obtained a post in a public school, hating the work, yet sticking to it doggedly, as it meant not only financial independence, but personal liberty.

All these broken pictures passed through her mind as the shiffle-shuffle of the horse died away—old, bent, gray, wrinkled, the political mother of an endless stream of noisy, restless children. All these years of drudgery for what? Food, clothes, roof—little else! But what were twenty or thirty years of drudgery if, among them, there were three or four into which all the luxuries ​of life might be crowded? The devil always uses this argument; it is the best he has.

The disembodied spirit of the girl crept back into the sordid bedroom. Then imagination took up the thread where retrospection had laid it down. She saw a limousine stop before the house in Washington Square, perhaps twenty minutes after she had left it. Out of the car jumped a man in evening clothes. A fine Panama gave a rakish touch to his dark, handsome head. There was eagerness in his step as he hurried up to the door and rang the bell. His pose as he waited reminded one of Romeo, or Lothario, or the devil in mufti; it all depended on whether one saw him through the eyes of a romantic young girl, a poor young man, or the shade of Virgil. Under his arm he carried a long, narrow box such as florists use. He smiled.

Presently she saw the landlady open the door.

"Miss Warren?"

"She is gone."

"Gone?"

"Yes."

"When will she return?"

"She will not return. She has left for good."

He laid the flowers on the stand. "Will you be so good as to tell me exactly what has happened?"

"I have not the least idea. She left twenty minutes ago, bag and baggage. If you will leave your address …"

​"It would be useless," he interrupted, with unexpected curtness. "Good evening!" He opened the door himself and went out into the street. "Club!" he directed, entering the limousine and slamming the door.

All these pictures were dreadfully vivid to Ruth. It seemed as though she was living through every scene again, through all the pain and the shame of it. She put aside these recollections suddenly and energetically. Her life was in danger; she must waste no vitality in useless retrospection. She looked out of the rear window of her prison. Always there was a Chinaman in the door of the outhouse, always covertly watching her window. They? Who were they who were to come for her? At ten that night this riddle was solved.

Colburton came in quietly and stood with his back to the door.

"You?" she whispered across the bed behind which she had taken refuge at the sound of the turning key. For a space the walls of the room warped fantastically. As they steadied down and became normal again she slowly reached for one of her hatpins. She could die.

But Colburton did not approach her; he remained where he was.

"Weren't expecting me, then?"

"No. I hadn't thought you quite so base as this." The sight of this man stiffened her spine. But she determined to see if there was not some ​decency left in his soul. "Better let me go, Norton. No good can possibly come of this. You'll be sorry. There must be some good in you, just enough not to let you do such a horrible thing as this. To bring me to such a house! Oh! You had better let me go."

"I offered you marriage in Venice, and you declined it. I was a fool, I suppose, but I meant it that morning. Now you're going to come to me of your own free will."

"No. You forget one thing."

"And what's that?"

"I can always die. I'm not your kind."

"You are going to be," he said, quietly. "Die? They always talk of dying, but they don't. Oh, you need not tremble! I sha'n't lay a hand on you until you come to me. I might have put you on board the yacht, but I did not think it would pay. You had to be broken first."

"I can not be kept here forever."

"I can and will keep you here until you break. No woman ever played your game successfully with me."

She knew now from his tone that he was without mercy. "But how many games have you played with women? Let us speak the truth to each other. When I first met you I thought you might inspire me with love."

He interrupted. "And when you learned that I couldn't, you said good-by, didn't you? Yes, let us speak the truth. You thought it over carefully. I could feather your nest comfortably. ​You took my gifts and permitted an occasional caress to keep the fire in me. … Ah, I know all about you, Ruth. I sent back to your little college town. I know your pedigree. You're cut from the same pattern as your mother, only, she made a bargain and kept it. You let me go to the extent of purchasing a certain kind of trousseau. You made a bargain, and then you played the cheat. Yes, let us speak the truth while we're about it. And then that night at Juneau's you ran away from me without any explanation."

"Cheat? To a certain extent, yes. But do you want the real explanation? I will give it to you. When you put my coat on that night I saw you in the mirror. You smiled and winked at the head-waiter as if I'd been a woman you had just picked up in the street."

"So that was it!" Colburton sensed chagrin.

"Yes, that was it. I had up to that moment believed you really cared for me. I was very unhappy. I had failed in the great object of my life—I had failed utterly. I turned to you. I did not care what became of me. Up to the moment I looked into that mirror I was ready to go with you. I did not love you, but I might have. I would have kept to the letter of my bargain. Well, in the mirror I saw everything. I knew instantly the kind of man you were. You would not have kept to the letter of your bargain. And a little later I should have been no better than the the poor things who live in these houses until they go to the hospitals to die. But God did not ​intend that I should go that way—be your kind."

"You will be before you leave this house," he replied, moodily.

"I can always kill myself."

"How?"

She smiled. He did not like that smile. He was a little afraid of her.

"You have only to put your hand on me to test my earnestness."

"You kept the pearls," he said, a queer look in his eyes.

"So I did. I took them in payment for that smile of yours. Oh, I offer no excuses for what I have done. It was all cold-blooded. Twenty times I was on the point of sending back those pearls. Do you think my conscience never bothered me?"

"Did it ever occur to you that I could have had you arrested for theft? You took something of which, at that time, you had no right."

"Yes; it occurred to me that morning in Venice. You were trying to separate us. Perhaps that was your tale to the carabinieri."

"Ah! our red-headed friend? Where is he?"

"He'll find me; never doubt that."

"Will he? Will he want to find you? Men are not friendly for nothing."

"His kind are."

"I'll break you, Ruth. I haven't been called a hell-rake for nothing. I'll break you. I've all the time in the world. You'll come to me; wait and see. And I wouldn't put any stake on that Irish friend. ​By this time he believes you've eloped with Camden."

"Camden?"

"Why, yes. Camden's the cleverest man in his way I know. When you ran away I sent him after you. I gave him your photograph. And here you are!"

"Camden!" she repeated, dully.

"Yes. Can't you see that you've eloped with him?"

"With my luggage on board and all my money with Mr. Grogan? Nobody will believe that."

"Sometimes women run away without their hats. You were coming to me with little else. Your Irishman will prove a human being like the rest. I shouldn't wait too long for him. Good night."

Her hell now became a definite one. Some night he would come in wine, and then God help her!

On the tenth night he did come in wine. He walked toward her without parley, and she saw what lay in his eyes. She prayed silently and ran around behind the bed. He ran after her, laughing. She drew out a hatpin and struck at him blindly. It bit deeply into his arm, but he was too deep in wine to feel the pain. He caught her by the wrist and wrenched the pin from her grasp, and tossed it out of the window. The second hatpin was not long in following.

She fought him like a tigress. She buried her teeth in his hand, scratched and kicked him. She ​fought with all the weapons she had, as all women fight when their honor is at stake. And it was her honor. Finally he succeeded in getting her in his arms. He kissed her so roughly that her lips bled. He then jumped back beyond the bed, still laughing.

It was here that William came in, haggard but bright-eyed.

CHAPTER XXIII

AFTER William had spoken to Ruth there was a second tableau which lasted about two minutes. The girl was holding herself up by the last shred of her will. Now that the danger was over, now that the horrible hours of suspense were done with, it seemed as though every nerve in her body had gone slack, like violin strings suddenly touched by night dampness. He had come! All along she had known that he would come. The confidence which this prescience had instilled in her heart had stood like a rock between her and self-destruction. "Call to me, and I'll come." He had said that.

The smile on Colburton's face slowly faded. His mind, fuddled by wine and dizzied by the fury of the recent struggle, refused to accept as a reality the advent of this Irishman. It was not humanly possible for him to be in this room, to arrive at this precise moment. Colburton made a slight gesture, as if to dismiss the apparition.

Then William moved. He walked backward to the door, found the key, transferred it to the inside, and turned it. A hysterical sob rose and died in Ruth's throat. She had never thought of running to the door while struggling with Colbur​ton. She saw William drop the key into a pocket. There was nothing hasty about his movements; all was deliberately done ; and this very deliberateness held the other man in thraldom.

"I've got something here that belongs to you."

With an unexpected gesture William flung the chamois bag into Colburton's face. The thread snapped; the pearls cascaded to the floor and bounded and ran about.

William drew off his coat and flung it aside; and then Colburton knew that what he saw was made of solids. Trapped!

"Don't … don't kill him!" whispered Ruth. She could not stand any more horrors.

"Kill him? Not much! But I'm going to put the fear of God in his heart, believe me. …"

"Look out!" she warned.

William laughed as he leaped forward. Colburton succeeded in drawing the automatic, but not in leveling it. William gripped Colburton's wrist and shook it. The weapon fell near the bed.

"Pick that up, sister; it may come in handy later."

Ruth laid the automatic on the bed.

"Well, Handsome-Is, we meet again. You call yourself a white man!"

William struck, not with the fist, but with the palm. A clenched hand, used with the same force, would have knocked Colburton down. He was a rogue, but he was not a physical coward as is usual with men in his breed. But he knew that ​for once he would need the strength of ten men and the cunning of a were-wolf.

"Millions, huh? Call on them, white man!" snarled William.

Instinctively Colburton knew what those palms promised in the way of torture. Nothing stings like the flat of the human hand. A blow of the fist numbs and bruises, but the palm crucifies the nerves, keeps them alive and dancing with pain.

It was a singular combat, Colburton smashing out blindly and hopelessly, and William using only his palms. They were terrible buffets. Bare knuckles would have been merciful in comparison. Thwack! thwack! across the eyes, the mouth, the nose, the cheeks, and the side of the head, all stinging like hell fire. Some of Colburton's wild blows got home, but so savage was William's mood that he scarcely felt them. His eyes were like polar ice; his cruelty was feline. Into this corner and that Colburton stumbled, soon half-blind, cursing and sobbing. Duck and dodge as he would he could not escape those palms. He flung chairs at William's feet; he tipped over the table and the supper-tray; he picked up and threw small objects, more or less accurately. One of these, a little bronze god for incense sticks, struck William on the forehead, laying it open. But none of these efforts served. The blows kept falling. To the girl the impact of those plams was like pistol-shots.

There was another sound; only the girl heard it—the snap of the pearls as the scuffling boots ​crunched them into powder. Her subsequent act had no meaning; she was not conscious of it. She stooped and gathered those pearls which had rolled to her feet, all the while her direct gaze never leaving the two men. She stood up, the pearls clutched tightly in her hand.

In Udaipur she had seen a spectacular battle between an enormous tiger and a leopard which had accidentally strayed into the tiger's den. To her mind, shocked from its balance by the happenings of this night, William began to assume the shape of that tiger, and Colburton became the leopard. Presently she cried out. She could not stand the sight or sound any longer.

"Don't! don't!" she begged. "Let him go!"

Mercy? How like a woman that was! William heard the call and understood. She wanted mercy for the man, now that he was reeling about, beaten. Mercy? Had Colburton ever shown any? Did he know what the word meant? How many women had begged mercy hopelessly at the feet of this man? And so William began to strike for them. His hands were red and beginning to swell.

"God! kill me, kill me!" sobbed the wretch.

"The door!" Ruth screamed. "They are breaking in the door!" She saw the panels warp.

William drew back for the real finishing blow, when Colburton stumbled, struck his temple against the marble top of the bureau, and crumpled up.

At the same moment the door crashed inward ​and five husky Chinamen crowded over the threshold. With a deep sense of chagrin William understood that in his pitiless vengeance he had overreached. Five! Their thick, yellow torsos were naked.

With a Herculean effort William stooped and picked up the insensible victim and hoisted him to the front as a bulwark. He did not wait. He was a true fighting-man, and he knew from experience that generally the first blow decided a rough-and-tumble conflict. He rushed Colburton's body straight toward the Orientals, who stopped, not knowing how to handle such a manœuver. William heaved the body forward as from a catapult. The yellow men were bowled about like tenpins. One made a frantic endeavor to catch Colburton; but he lost his footing and both he and his burden crashed against the banister, which gave. There was a wild yell, and the two bodies disappeared.

The remaining four, recovering quickly, rushed forward. Had they been Japs William would have gone out broken or dead. But the Chinese are not athletes, they are not natural fighters. They do well enough in numbers if armed; but they possess an inherent distaste for the white man's methods of using his fists.

William never missed a point in this game of fists and wits. He fought with his head quite as much as with his hands. They call that generalship in the ring. He had stamina, skill, and brains. No doubt, had he taken up the sport as a ​business instead of a pastime, he would have found a distinguished niche in the sporting pages of the newspapers. But he fought for the fun of it when necessity did not compel him to fight otherwise.

William mapped out his campaign without an instant's hesitation. He had played the fool with Colburton; he had forgotten where he was or that the man would have henchmen somewhere about the house. Moreover, he was tired, and he could not close his puffed hands as tightly as he would have liked. He must keep the yellow devils in front, near the door, where he could see them all. If one succeeded in getting in the rear, out of range, that would be the wind-up. Sticking to his tactics of carrying the fight to the enemy, he ran to meet the onrush, crying out his final advice to Ruth.

"When I got 'em outside, be ready to shove the bed against the door. If I fall, shoot to kill!"

"Dear God!" cried Ruth. She couldn't help him; she had all she could do to stand and she hardly knew which end of the automatic was the death-dealing one.

As the battle against odds began, she recalled in a flash that curious desire of hers, one day in Naples, to see this Irishman fighting with his bare fists for his life. From her vantage on the far side of the bed she watched this incredible contest. She was in the grip of a trance. It was not possible to stir. She was conscious of being able to breathe with difficulty—that was all. One hand ​held the automatic, the other still clutched the pearls.

The shock of the bodies, the panting, the shaking of the floor—it was like a scene transposed from the Iliad. The oil-lamp (which had in the previous battle escaped miraculously) contributed a weird theatricality to the movement of the struggling group, throwing it here into dead, black shadow, there into flashes of yellow-white.

And all for her! She had dreamed of such moments, but life itself had been singularly free of thrills. Men had fought for her in her daydreams, sometimes with rapier, sometimes with lance, sometimes with musket at the cabin's loop-holes, and just as the last shot had sped they had heard the bugle of the cavalry. It was very pleasant to dream like that. But this! …

He was like a madman; he was here, there, everywhere, unexpectedly, jabbing, swinging, heaving. Frequently there was a screech of ripping cloth. His shirt was hanging on his shoulders in shreds and streamers. It was impossible to follow his arms clearly; all she could identify was that shock of red hair surging among the swinging pigtails.

All at once he tripped and went down, and she was sure that the end had come. But no! There he was, like a swimmer caught and buried for a second by a toppling surge. This time he broke away from the milling, yellow bodies. He clutched the teak stand, heavy and tough, and swung it high above his head.

​The yellow men paused; and well they might. They had been sent against a man; but yonder blue-eyed was not a man, he was a half-god, for all his bloody face, for all his tatters. They had had enough. As William whirled the stand and let go, they broke and made for the hallway. William slammed the door and leaned against it.

"The bed!" he cried, thickly.

How she was able to push it against the door was something she never could explain. The instant this feat was accomplished she fell upon the bed in a faint. William did not turn to her at once. He hauled the bureau over to the foot of the bed and stood it endways. To open the door now they would have to push out the side of the house.

He then turned to Ruth. Her arms lay extended on each side. The pearls had run into the depression made by the hand which had held them. Pearls! His expression became grim and sad. She had picked them up while he had fought for her liberty and honor. He was seized with a violent desire to go about the room and crush all the pearls he could find, stamp and twist his heel upon them. Instead, he rubbed her wrists energetically. After a little while she opened her eyes.

"All right now, sister?" He was breathing deep and fast. He bolstered her up with the pillows, and she smiled wanly. "Gee! if I'd only had one of those Ajax beefsteaks under my vest, I'd have cleaned 'em up in jig-time. Some little ​scrap, though, believe me—some … little … scrap!"

He sat down on the bed and held his head in his hands. He was groggy and a bit sick at his stomach. He had had nothing to eat since morning. One of his small ribs hurt badly; an eye was closed; his tongue found a loose tooth. It they had come at him once again and the teak stand had failed to stop them! …

The next thing he knew she was standing at his side, one arm around his head, and a cool towel was being tenderly applied to his burning, throbbing face.

"I wasn't worth it!" he heard her say. "I wasn't worth it!"

He looked up.

"Aw, sister! It's all over. That rat 'll never bother you again."

"That isn't it." And then she told him the whole sordid story.

It was not a very coherent tale, but he understood. To him there was nothing sordid in it. It was human, every-day temptation.

"Aw, what are you worrying about? Don't we all stumble around most of the time? Aren't we all good and bad in spots? Sure. Some time or other everybody gets the idea that the easy route's the only one left. The thing is to get back in time. You did that."

She tied the towel around his forehead and stepped off a little way.

He was as broad in the mind as he was in the ​shoulders. He continued. "Why shouldn't you want good things to wear, clothes and all that? Don't we all want something just a little better than we've got? Sure. And then, you'd gone through a pretty tough disappointment. You had musical genius, and you couldn't make it lie down and roll over. That 'd make any one kind of desperate. You ran into that skunk the wrong time—that was all. He was handsome, he had money, and he was smooth. Being a genius, you've got one of those consciences that was worse 'n none at all. Always sticking pins in you—huh? No human being ever lived that didn't think bad once in a while. But thinking and doing 's two different things. It's stepping back that brings home the bacon; and you … stepped back. Say, do you know what to-night is?" He smiled. It was the smile of a gargoyle.

"No. I've forgotten to keep track of the days."

"Well, it's little old Christmas Eve, and I'm as homesick as … as hell! Can't you see the good old clean snow coming down, and the Salvation Army Santy Claus hopping about to keep his feet warm and watching the nickels and dimes dropping into his kettle? Huh? And the kids with their little red smellers pasted against the toy-shop windows? 'I choose that!' Can't you hear 'em arguing? Aw, little old New York on Christmas Eve!"

"Don't." Her throat filled suddenly, and she was very close to a passionate storm of tears. ​It would have been well for her if she had cried abandonedly.

"To-morrow we're going to have the greatest Christmas spread they can turn out at Raffles's And after that we're going to see how fast we can get back to those two chairs behind the deck-houses. The old Ajax—huh? I could have cried when I had to leave her at Hong-Kong."

"Why did you come back for me?" The question came involuntarily.

"You want to know?" He looked down at his swollen hands. "Well, because I love you, not like a brother, but like a man who loves one woman once in his life. I know. I'm not exactly your kind. I grew up among the rough-necks, maybe. My education's a joke. But I'll tell you this much: if they'd dragged you down to hell before I got here, I'd 've gone down into hell and dragged you back. You're a good woman. What's one mistake? … Will you marry me?"

He dared not look at her. He continued to stare at his hands. The towel, drawn a bit too tightly, dripped water which trickled down the end of his nose.

Who shall say that these were not the first honest words of love ever spoken in this drab house of bondage? This thought came into the girl's mind as she gazed down at his head. She was dreadfully tired. … Some one to take care of her, some one who loved her to stand between her and all future buffets, to wait upon her and to serve her. Why not? She felt that all her for​tresses had been smashed; there was not a single barrier; there was neither dream nor illusion left.

There was a long interval of silence.

"I … I will marry you," she said.

I have remarked that William was fine in the grain, and that the harsh environments of his earlier years had not in any way coarsened that grain. All he did was to reach out, take her hand in his, and pat it. The most natural act in the world would have been to take her in his arms and kiss her. He merely patted her hand. Why? Because he knew that Ruth did not love him. Later you will understand the supreme sacrifice he had in mind when he made that proposal.

"All right, sister. We'll hunt up the parson to-morrow. But just now suppose we think up some way of getting out of this shebang? Where's your sleeve?"

She found it by the window.

"Got any pins? We'll have to patch up a bit; can't go into the streets like this."

She plucked some pins from the cushion on the bureau. As he touched the cool flesh of her arm he trembled. He was going to fight a battle beside which the recent one was as nothing. Would he be strong enough to win it? Maybe, with God's help. After the sleeve had been pinned on he got his coat.

"Where's the revolver? Here it is, on the bed. Gee! but I'm a hick with these things. I couldn't hit the broadside of an elephant. But they won't know that."

​He turned the automatic over and over in his hands, curiously. But he was a natural mechanic, and it wasn't long before he had mastered the mechanism of the gun.

"All aboard!"

"The pearls," she said, dully.

"What?" He stared at her, dumfounded. It was unbelievable. "You want them … now?"

"To return them. Oh, I couldn't live otherwise! I couldn't!"

He understood at once. She wanted a clean slate.

"But Camden stole them."

"So did I. I had no right to them. I tried a thousand times to convince myself that I had; but I really hadn't. I was just a cheat. I … I hadn't paid for them."

"How many did you have?"

"There were forty-eight in all. I unstrung them. I was going to sell one whenever I needed money."

"All right."

William crawled about on his hands and knees and eventually recovered thirty-two. The others were little white patches of dust on the threadbare carpet.

"How much were they worth?" he asked, curiously.

"Twelve thousand, at least. I priced a necklace like it, and they said it was worth that."

A doctor would have given her a serious glance; but William was at this moment unobservant. Little beads like that worth twelve thousand!

​"That's a lot of money. Let's see; sixteen missing; something over four thousand. All right; a clean slate it is. We'll match 'em up and send 'em back. And now let's get out of this."

He pushed aside the bureau and bed and opened the door cautiously. The hallway was deserted. He beckoned to her to go on ahead. They went down the stairs quietly, pausing every other step to listen. As they reached the lower hall the door to the parlor opened about three inches. Instantly he leveled the automatic.

"No, no!" cried Ruth. "It's the little Japanese girl who was kind to me."

"G'by!" said Saki San, her almond-shaped eyelids as nearly round as they possibly could be. "Madame say you go damn fast velly well. G'by!" The door closed.

William and Ruth stepped out into the street.

CHAPTER XXIV

AND so they were married. No more romance, nothing but realities from now on; and some of these realities bitter and sad, and some of them touched with incomparable glory. No life moves forever on one level, no life is so drab that happiness does not pierce it somewhere, somehow.

Christmas, with a sky of faded blue and burning brass; dust, heat, enervation. Clouds came up quickly, there was the usual downpour of lukewarm rain; then more heat, more dust, more glare. To William it was an unbelievable Christmas. He saw not a single face in which the spirit of this day was manifest. … Snow blowing into his face with cold freshness; snow under his feet, sparkling on his coat, covering the trees in the park with fleecy mantles; cold, wind-driven snow; never had he been so homesick as on this, his wedding-day.

Two rings, a small diamond and a plain gold band, took all but eighteen dollars of his small store. But Ruth had a few hundred, and he could borrow from her until either they sent him his letter of credit or he went to Hong-Kong for it. So there was no financial worry in his mind. He knew that the diamond was a bit of sentimental ​foolishness, but he could not resist the temptation.

They were married at two o'clock, at the American mission. Never had the missioner officiated at a stranger wedding. In the first place, there was something in the bride's eyes that baffled him. They were more like the eyes of a person in a trance. The girl looked not at objects, but through them. And the man appeared to be all hands and feet; he could not move without blundering into something; and he spoke as if he was afraid of the sound of his voice. Besides, one of his eyes was discolored, his lips were bruised, a piece of court-plaster stretched diagonally across his forehead. The missioner decided that this was a plain case of mismating. The girl had beauty and breeding; the man had neither, though none could doubt the frank honesty of his blue eyes.

In other latitudes the missioner would have insisted upon knowing a little more of the family history, and in the event of their refusing to acquaint him with the facts which inclined them toward matrimony would have politely declined to act. But this was the Orient, a world where laxity disintegrated vigor, where all the mysterious kinks in human nature developed quickly and became the salients in character.

He took William aside, however, and asked him if the young lady was, or had been, ill.

"Ill? Why, no. But she's been through a lot of worry. She'll be all right when things settle down again."

​"Do you wish to marry this man? Are you acting of your own free will?" asked the missioner, as a final attempt to get at the truth.

Ruth stared out of the window at the patch of brilliant sunshine in the middle of the red dust of the compound. The pause was so long that the missioner began to fidget, and William's freckles grew deeper and deeper in hue. Why didn't she answer?

"Ruth?"

"Oh, I beg your pardon! Yes, I wish to marry Mr. Grogan."

With a sigh the missioner opened his book to the marriage ritual. Ruth spoke her affirmatives in a colorless tone. William had to clear his throat a dozen times.

"Now," said the missioner, smiling, after the gold band had been clumsily slipped over Ruth's finger, "we are all Americans. Why not have your Christmas dinner with us?"

"Thank you," said Ruth; "but we have planned to have our dinner at the Raffles." She wanted no curious strangers about. Her head was on fire, and she wanted to be alone, alone.

William's face expressed his disappointment. Strangers would have been most welcome to him. Now that the ceremony was over, a fear laid hold of him. Had he done right? Ought he not to have waited until Ruth had had a few days' rest?

"You'd better watch her," whispered the mis​sioner as he escorted this strange pair to the door. "I don't know what her worry is, but it strikes me that she is going to be ill."

"Ill?"

"Yes."

The missioner was now positive that the girl was not fully aware of the step she had taken. Confused and troubled, he let them go out into the compound before he recalled that he had not blessed them. He ran after, waving his hands. William's thought was that he had innocently given the missioner some bad money.

"I forgot to bless you, you poor children!"

William bent his head, but Ruth stared straight on.

Their dinner at Raffles's was sadder even than the wedding. Neither could eat; neither could talk; neither of them heard the cheerful Chinese table-boy repeat his "Melly Clistmus!"

William thought he understood what was going on in Ruth's mind. She was reviewing her life, her failures, and this final smash of all her woman's dreams. He knew. The man she had picked out in fancy did not in the least resemble William Grogan. He had not meant anything wrong; yet it was now evident that he had committed a crime he had taken advantage of her helplessness, he had not given her a chance to recover her balance.

The more closely he looked into his act, the more reprehensible it became. Marriage! God help him, he saw clearly enough now that what ​in his generosity he had intended doing might have been done without tragedy. He had wrecked her future without benefiting his own in the least. He was a thousand times a fool. He no longer kept up the farce of self-deception; he had hoped that some day she might learn to care for him. Blind, unhappy fool! She would now hate him until the end of her days.

Ruth broke in upon these melancholy cogitations. "My head aches very badly. You won't mind if I go to my room?"

"Good Lord, no!"

He went with her to the room he had engaged for her.

"Where … where is your room?"

So she was worrying about that? "On the other side," he lied. "All your things are here. Now, sister, you lie down and take it easy. I'll drop in around about six. And maybe a rickshaw ride along the water-front 'll brace you up."

At six he returned to find her delirious. She did not recognize him. Terrified, he ran down to the office and asked for a doctor. When the doctor came he reported that it was a case of brain fever.

"Will she die?"

"That depends. Plenty of ice-packs, a good nurse, proper care, and there's a chance for her. She looks as if she had natural vitality. Your wife?"

"Yes." Brain fever! God was already beginning his punishment.

"I take it, Mr. Grogan, that you're a tourist, so ​I'll see to the nurse and order the ice myself. It's a good thing it's winter. I'll have a punka rigged up for the daytime. Until I return you will apply cold compresses; that is, wet the towel frequently and lay it upon her head. Don't be afraid if it drips."

"How long will it last?"

"If it's a slight attack, two or three weeks; if it is serious, a month or more. It depends upon the severity of the congestion—what kind of mental trouble brought it on. But don't get worried; just keep saying to yourself that she's going to pull through, and she will."

All through the long night William sat by the bed. Sometimes he cracked the artificial ice for the nurse, or he put Ruth's threshing arms under the coverlet, or he stood listening to her incoherent babble, hoping in vain to hear his own name. It was of a past he knew but little—the days with her father.

"Go to bed, Mr. Grogan," advised the nurse when three o'clock came around. "You need sleep, lots of it, if you're going to help me. You'll have to do something in watching during the day, until the crisis is past."

William had not engaged any room for himself at the hotel. His idea had been to seek out some near-by boarding-house. He wanted to leave Ruth with a sense of absolute freedom. She alone was registered, and only as Miss Warren. In other parts of the world this would have complicated affairs, but not in Singapore.

​Dumbly he went down to the outside café and sat in one of the wicker chairs. He fell asleep almost immediately. He was aroused at dawn by the Chinese scrubs.

Up-stairs there was no change. The nurse slept on a cot in the veranda, while William watched and changed the ice-packs until nine. The nurse then relieved him.

He began to conside his finances. He had thirty-six rupees—about twelve dollars. Ruth's checks would be so much waste paper until she could properly indorse them. If she died … No; God wouldn't do that! And he had believed that trip to Hong-Kong and return the worst hell that could be meted out to him. He had only stepped into the anteroom. Twelve dollars! His only hope lay in the promise of the consul-general.

He went back to the annex of the hotel, where the offices of the American consulate were located, and asked to see the consul-general.

"He is away," said the clerk.

"When will he be back?"

"I can't say. In a week, maybe; he may stay a fortnight. The Sultan of Johore is giving a hunting party. The consul-general left rather unexpectedly last night. But there is seldom anything of importance going on in Singapore at this time of the year."

"Seldom anything of importance!" repeated William, sitting down because a strange attack at his knees made it impossible for him to stand.

​"Can I do anything for you?"

"I don't know. My wife is in the hotel, down with brain fever. I have about twelve dollars. My letter of credit is in Hong-Kong, and I can't get it until the consul-general backs up my identity."

"Give me all the details and I'll see what can be done. It will be impossible to reach the chief by telegraph. They go miles up north into the jungles."

William gave the clerk the essential details, and to verify these the clerk inspected the chief's desk calendar: "Memo. Write Cook Hong-Kong relative W. Grogan's letter of credit." The clerk was glad to run across this memorandum; it gave some color to the story.

"I'm afraid he went away without sending that letter. A cable would do no earthly good in a case like this. By this time Cook's people must be up in the air, and the consulate seal would be necessary before they would surrender the letter. I'm sorry, but I have no authority to act."

"I don't care about myself. If I was sure everything would be all right with her, I could manage to shift somehow."

The clerk chewed the end of his lead-pencil. He did not know how to act. Not a day passed that some clever rogue did not try to put through a bit of fraud. He himself had been imposed upon several times, and the word "money" sent him back into his shell. Yet this chap had the identi​fication-book representing the ownership of six hundred pounds, and the chief himself had made a memorandum on his calendar.

"I'll tell you what. Stick to the hotel. They won't bother you with any bill for a couple of weeks, and by that time the chief will be home. Frankly, in this half-way port you don't trust everybody. There's a lot of strange driftwood floating around, and we have our eyes open. I've been stung a dozen times. You stick to the hotel. If they come to you with any bill before the chief returns, hunt me up and I'll try to explain to the management."

"That's pretty white."

"You're welcome. Over here about all we do is to straighten out financial tangles for tourists—and they are always losing money and trunks; ship broken sailors back home; and play charity generally, and no thanks. Anyhow, I'll take a chance. Drop in once in a while and let me know how things work out."

"Sounds pretty good to hear some one talk United States. Thanks."

William returned to the office of the hotel and engaged the cheapest room he could find. On the morrow he would look around for a job—that is, if Ruth were no worse.

From eleven until three he stood his watch while the nurse slept. Man and wife, he mused; the yellow-bird wedded to the crow. What would she do, how would she act, when she came back from this no-land where fevered fancies go? ​Maybe she'd forgive him when she understood everything.

The doctor called. The temperature had not gone any higher, and this was an encouraging sign. Bravely William laid bare his financial predicament. No matter what happened, he was not going to sail under false colors. The doctor told him to put such worries into the background, or there'd be two patients instead of one.

"There's a lot of white men in this world, after all."

"I'll wager," replied the doctor, putting away his thermometer. "When you're in trouble you find out where they are. To-night or to-morrow night we'll come to the crisis. You see, every case of brain fever is individual. No two persons are affected exactly alike. If the fever goes no higher by to-morrow night, then we can breathe easier. It may hang right where it is for a long time, or it may recede at once. You never can tell. To-night and to-morrow night I'll take turns with the nurse, and you can sleep. If a serious turn comes, I'll send for you. She's quieter now."

Ruth's left arm lay outside the coverlet. William laid his hand upon the forearm. It was dry and hot. He raised it gently to put it back under the coverlet, when the two rings caught his eye. The sight of them gave birth to a Quixotic idea. Slowly he slipped off the rings and dropped them into a pocket. When she came to her senses his act would at least save her the shock of immediate ​recollection. She need never know until she was strong enough.

The next day, his heart big with misery, William went forth in search of a job. He was obsessed with the idea that he must find some way to make money. It was all right for the doctor and the nurse to trust him, but sooner or later he must have money. There was always the possibility of the consul-general getting killed on that hunting expedition. And then where would he be?

First he sought the few plumbing establishments. They thought he was joking at first, and laughed pleasantly; but when he declared his seriousness they informed him that there was no chance for any but the native. No white man could work for the native wage. Then he tried the hardware-shops and ship-chandlers—natives. It was not pride on William's part; he would have dug trenches with the devil himself if there had been a white man's wage in it. His idea was to get enough ready cash to cable Burns. He dared not ask the doctor to lend him money. The man might turn about and refuse to trust him further. And the clerk at the consulate had hinted that he could not afford to lend anything except his good will, and William was grateful enough for even that. He must find a white man's wage for a week or so. Must.

He returned to the hotel at noon. Ruth's condition was unchanged. He remained two hours at the bedside, then renewed his quest for work. At five he found himself on one of the ​piers. What drew him toward a group of white men he did not know. It was one of those mysterious "hunches." Perhaps it was their excited gestures. At any rate, he approached. Three of the men were officers off some vessel in the harbor, and the fourth was a landsman.

"I tell you Jason's gone to the palace at Johore. He's the only expert I've got, the only man in Singapore who could handle your work just now. The Sultan is installing new plumbing. It's a four or five weeks' job, and I can't call him back for a job that isn't worth more than three thousand rupees, probably a good deal less."

"But, man, can't you dig up some one for us? We can't wait for your expert to return and we can't put to sea with fresh-water tanks aleak and the piping broken God knows where! I can't afford to have any native tinkering around my ship. It's no ordinary job. Why can't you handle it personally?"

"Simply because while I manage a shop I'm no expert plumber. Jason is probably the only man in Singapore who knows anything about ship plumbing."

Ship plumbing! William's heart leaped thunderously. So much depended upon his address. He called it bluff. He would have exchanged a year of his life for ten minutes of that old fearlessness. If he could keep his voice steady, mask his anxiety. … He stepped forward.

"Pardon me, but are you looking for an expert plumber? I'm one."

​The four turned upon him abruptly and rather resentfully. They were English. Hidebound in their dislike and suspicion of all things which did not conform with routine, they instantly looked upon William as an impertinent bounder. But William's bold front and good clothes dissipated their first impression that he might be a beach-comber. One of the officers saw him for exactly what he was, an idle tourist. He decided in this instance to discount formality in favor of common-sense.

"You are an American, I fancy?"

"I am, and I'm an expert plumber. Couldn't help overhearing your talk. I've nothing to do, so I thought I might be able to help you out. It's dull between boats, and Raffles's isn't a lively joint just now. And I know something about the insides of a ship."

Which was perfectly true. Like all skilled mechanics, William was of an investigating trend. He could pass a Corregio or a Titian without a thrill; but a piece of strange machinery hypnotized him. Due to the friendliness of the Ajax's chief engineer, William had familiarized himself with that marvelous network of pipes which sprawls hither and yon between the decks of all big sea-going steamers until he knew them as the lines in his palm. So he was not throwing his dice blindly.

The chief engineer—for William recognized his stripes—looked at his watch. After all, the situation was quite as unusual as this young man's ​offer. It was no time to dodder, unless he wanted to lay up in port for weeks. It might be that he had fallen into a bit of genuine luck.

"Five o'clock. I suppose I'll have to take a chance. Step aboard the launch, Mr.—"

"Grogan—William Grogan, of Burns, Dolan & Co., New York."

"Glad if you can help us."

"You've got a good working-plan of the piping?"

"Yes. Queer game. Usually the carpenter and the assistant engineer could have handled the job. They left the ship at Saigon. Lascar crew—good servants, good sailors, but not up to a job like this. And everybody in Singapore is on some other job. Worse luck!"

At seven o'clock William had located the vital spots. The port side of the main deck, forward and amidship, would have to be torn up. The job would take perhaps eight or ten days. He would depend upon the manager for helpers. He would give his services as expert for two hundred dollars; they could accept it or decline it, as they pleased. The manager, seeing his profits dwindling—but forgetting that he was in luck to have any profits—swore roundly that the price was exorbitant.

"Give it and have done arguing," cried the chief engineer. "We're in a bally rotten hole, and this chap seems able to help us out. The whole job will come to about two hundred pounds. Our lines give you a deal of business, man, and for ​once I fancy you can cut down your profits a little to save us time."

The manager finally agreed to the terms, and William started back to town. The sweat he wiped from his forehead could not be charged to the heat. Two hundred dollars! There was something in this Irish luck, after all.

On the day William pocketed his precious forty pounds Ruth opened her eyes sanely. William came into the room just as he had left the ship. His finger-nails were broken and grimed, his face was streaked with sweat and dust, his clothes were covered with oil-stains and emanated the odor of gasolene, and his beard was three days old. When he saw sanity in her glance, he broke down; and the nurse, fearful that his emotion might upset the patient, ordered him from the room.

In a little while he begged the nurse to let him come back; he promised he'd make no noise, that he would not touch the patient; all he wanted was to see if he was really recognized. It was hard for the nurse to deny this man anything, now that she knew him.

"Just for a minute," she said. "She must have absolute quiet."

William tiptoed to the bed. "Do you know me, sister?"

Sister? He called her that? Had it been a dream, then? But Ruth was too weak and tired to think. She smiled a little and closed her eyes.

As troubles never come singly, neither do the good things. The consul-general returned from ​his hunting trip, despatched documentary evidence sufficient to establish William's right to his letter of credit, explained the situation to the management of the Raffles's, and William's financial difficulties became recollections. He had his trunk and grips brought down to the room adjacent to Ruth's, and his only care was to wait upon her, to share through the nights the burdens of the nurse, and to assume a cheerfulness he was far from feeling. Never he failed to call Ruth sister; never by word or sign did he refer to the past. When the day came when she was able to walk alone he would tell her. It was going to be very, very hard; but he had tightened up his resolve to a point where no self-interest could weaken it. He would tell her the plain, honest truth.

The slowness of Ruth's convalescence rather baffled the doctor. Apparently this young wife did not care whether she got well or not. There was none of the usual fretting over staying in bed; she seemed content to lie there upon her pillows. The doctor, however, did not confide this fact to William.

Two weeks passed before Ruth was able to sit in a chair. They carried her out to the wide veranda-gallery whence she could view the lovely panorama of the harbor. And hour after hour she sat there, staring at the ships as they came in or went out to sea.

During the hours of delirium the nurse had managed to pick up enough odds and ends of the truth to form a coherent story. And all her sym​pathies went out to the man. The moment he came into the room he radiated love. It beamed from his eyes, it was in the touch of his big, clumsy, toil-stained hands, it was manifest in his unforgetfulness. All day long he labored in the heat; but he never was too weary to spend half the night at the bedside. The nurse wondered what kind of vitality it was this man drew upon, since, visibly, he had no way of renewing it.

Immediately Ruth regained consciousness, however, the nurse was keen to note the change in the man. The love was there, but he hid it, repressed it, stifled it. This part of the mystery the nurse could not solve.

One day, when she was able to walk about, Ruth asked—in fact, she had been wanting to ask the question for some time, but until now could not push her courage to the point—if she had had any rings on her hands when taken ill.

"Yes. I believe Mr. Grogan took them off for fear you might lose them," said the nurse. "You flung your arms about a good deal. You're a lucky woman, Mrs. Grogan. How that man loves you! Of course, you know that he had no money. He went out and found work. He'd work all day and watch at your bed nearly all night. Sometimes he fell asleep in the chair, and I would not disturb him until breakfast. For ten days he worked from six in the morning until five in the afternoon, and the pity of it, it wasn't needful. But he thought he just had to have money. He didn't know that the doctor and I ​understood, or that the doctor had quietly informed the office of the circumstances. We let him work because if he didn't have something to occupy his hands he would have fallen ill from sheer worry. He'd got the idea that in this part of the world nobody trusted any one. Well, we don't, everybody. But all we had to do was to look into his eyes."

The nurse, after freshening up Ruth's pillow, went back into the bedroom to make the bed.

From the rickshaw-stand in the court below the veranda Ruth could hear the Chinese boys laughing and talking in their queer gutturals. Occasionally one hailed a prospective passenger. From the sea came the deep-throated warning of an approaching steamer. Ruth stared at the fingers of her left hand. All the puzzling mysteries vanished, all the cobwebs of doubt blew away. She was married. She was Mrs. William Grogan.

Invalids are always the most selfish of individuals. Being an invalid Ruth thought of herself only, her misery, the whole dreary failure she had made of life. And God had not been kind enough to let her die! Married! She was Mrs. William Grogan. He had taken advantage of her helplessness, her mental unbalance, for when she had left that hideous place in Malay Street she had not been strictly accountable for her subsequent acts. Mrs. Grogan!

She barely noticed him when he came in that night. He attributed her demeanor to weariness. He was not especially quick-witted to-night; his ​thoughts were more or less engaged in going over that afternoon's adventure.

Now that the extraordinary troubles of life had simmered down into the matter-of-fact, every-day affairs—now that Ruth was on the way back and there was money in his pocket—it occurred to William that he would like to know what had become of the man Colburton. After an unsuccessful series of inquiries he finally decided that the only avenue open was the house in Malay Street, and thither he directed his steps, careless of the fact that his hour was irregular, indifferent if any saw him. He wanted news and he was not particular how this news was acquired.

The woman he desired most to see answered his ring. She was not going to let him in, believing his visit of a hostile nature.

"Keep that door open," he said. "I want some questions answered, and I want them answered straight. I could give you a taste of the British jail here if I wanted to."

"What do you want to know?"

"What's become of Colburton?"

"He has gone. Sailed away in his yacht."

"Didn't know but he might be dead."

"No fault of yours that he's alive," the woman replied, sullenly.

"What happened to him before I took my wife out of here?"

The woman fell back, her mouth open. "Your wife?"

"Ye-ah."

​"She is your wife? Then he lied to me. God knows I'm an outcast, but I'm not fool enough to touch anything like that. I thought she was one of those women who play for big stakes. He swore on his oath that she'd run away from him. He offered me a thousand rupees to hold her for a few days. How was I to know that he was lying?"

"Nothing doing with that line of talk. You can tell a good woman when you see her."

"I only saw her the night they brought her here. One of my girls took care of her."

"Did you get your thousand?" ironically.

"Yes."

"Well, then, I wont offer to buy you a new banister. I want to know just what happened."

"You're a strong man. When you flung him through the banister he fell upon his face in the lower hall. I had him carried to the Chinese quarters in the rear and held him there until I could get him to the hospital without having the police nosing around. He was in the hospital ten days. He came out badly disfigured."

"That's the best news I've heard in days. Then the ladies won't break their necks in the future running after him? How badly disfigured?"

"His nose and jaw were broken. His face will always be twisted. Is that all?"

"All, Isobel, all that I wish to know."

"You won't report me to the police?"

"I guess not. You and I know why. A decent woman doesn't want this kind of a story tagging ​her around. Disfigured, huh? What became of the other man, Camden?"

"I don't know."

"Well, that's all I can think of to-day."

The woman shut the door and William stepped off the porch into the street. So Colburton would go through life disfigured? That was more comforting than to know that he was dead. He judged Colburton more or less accurately. Repulsive to women, no longer fawned upon except for his money, never able to shut out the memory of that humiliating beating he had received in the presence of the woman he had wronged, Colburton would go through what remained of life tasting daily a bit of the hell he had so carelessly and callously brewed for others. Charity? William laughed. Pity? He rubbed his hands pleasurably. There are some deeds it is not human to forget or forgive; and so long as he lived there would remain in William's heart some dregs of the poison this man Colburton had instilled there. All the sermons ever preached will not change or uproot this quality of hatred; not in a strong man.

The nurse still slept on the cot on the veranda. So Ruth was alone now during the nights. The doctor had decreed thus. The patient's eyes, unattracted by movement of any kind, were more likely to close; and Ruth needed sleep, long hours of it. But if she could not see, she could hear the infinitesimal sounds of the night: the ticking of the clock on the stand, running water in some room a dozen doors away, the light crunch of passing ​rickshaws, the snap of a match in the court, and the pacing of the man in the next room, her husband.

She had fallen into the habit of counting these steps. It took fourteen to make the length of his room, but always on the return he paused midway for some reason. He was thinking, then? Ah, she believed she knew what.

Suddenly, one night, she heard a new sound. It was the door-knob! The white enamel fascinated her, for she could see it dimly beyond the foot of the bed. Knowing how powerful he was, that a lock was nothing if once he set his strength against it, she became icy with terror. She was about to summon the nurse when the rattle ceased. She heard him walk out to the veranda, and later she sensed the faint odor of pipe-tobacco. She looked at the clock. It was nine. The door-knob was not disturbed again that night.

For five consecutive nights, however, the knob rattled; always somewhere around nine, after the nurse had retired. Her terror grew and grew; it was setting her back. And yet, how could she tell him? How could she call the nurse and tell her?

On the sixth night, after the usual pacing, she heard him turn the knob again, but this time there came a gentle rapping.

"Ruth?" he called.

She did not answer. She sat up rigidly.

"Ruth, I must talk to you."

Then she spoke. "What is it?"

​"I've got something to say to you, and I can't tell it to you while the nurse is around."

"Can't you tell me through the door?"

"No. This thing has got to be a face-to-face business."

She got out of bed, turned on the light, and put on her kimono. Easily five minutes passed before she felt strong enough to go to the door.

As she opened it and stepped back, her shoulders were dripping. She was so weak that if he touched her she must fall. But he did not enter the room. He stood on the threshold and stared at her miserably.

CHAPTER XXVI

HIS hair was rumpled; he had thrown off his coat and collar, and the shirt was open at the throat. His shoulders filled the doorway; through the thin texture of the silk shirt the great, quiescent muscles were conspicuous; and yet his air was one of abject helplessness. He ran his fingers through his hair as if to reassure himself. She was by now very familiar with his gesture.

"I've been a coward," he began, his glance roving and pausing, avoiding as much as he could her wide, startled gray eyes. "But I couldn't put it off any longer. I've got to tell you what's on my mind, and I don't want any strangers around. God knows it's hard enough as it is!"

She might have been marble, for all the visible effect of those halting words.

"In the first place, I want you to forgive me the wrong I've done you."

"Wrong?" The trend, so absolutely at variance with what she had been expecting, befogged her.

"Ye-ah. I didn't honestly mean anything wrong, but I've done a whole lot of thinking lately. When I asked you to marry me you weren't yourself. You'd just been through seven kinds of hell. ​And I didn't know that I was thinking a lot about William Grogan when I asked you; but I guess I was. When I said I loved you, God knows that was square and true enough. I guess I began loving you from the first day you walked past my cellar window; but I didn't wake up to the fact until you came aboard the Ajax. Yes, that was honest enough. But deep down somewhere I thought maybe I might have a chance if you were married to me. Well, what I had on my mind was this: to give you a name until we got back to the States, to have the right to take care of you, to see that you had everything. I didn't know that you were coming down. Perhaps I wasn't very steady myself; I'd just been through a whale of a fight. If you've been through hell, so 've I—When you didn't turn up on the Ajax, when you lay there in that bed and we did not know which way it was going. Well, when we got back to the States I was going to give you your freedom and tide you over the bumps until the … the right one came along."

His fingers went into his hair again.

"That's what I had in my poor old coco, what I had to tell you to-night or choke to death. I couldn't sleep, thinking you'd put me in the same boat with other men. Colburton won't bother you any more. He's gone back with his face out of plumb. I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't glad, damned glad. He got what was coming to him. And now that I've got it all off my chest, you just buck up, sister, and forget it. When we get back ​to little old United, we'll fix up things. I know you've been worrying a lot. Gee! what woman wouldn't have worried? And you've been mighty kind to me. If I remember anything about history or pictures or churches it's because you told me; if I remember any place it's because you were there with me. I can't lose you altogether. I want to fix it up so's sometimes I can come around and hear you play the piano. All I want you to do is to get well and make believe the whole business was a bad nightmare. That's all, sister. Good night."

He smiled, reached in and caught hold of the knob, closing the door rather hastily. He did not want to hear her voice, he did not care for any expression of gratitude. He had burned his bridges, and his heart could not stand any more.

Ruth often wondered in after days how long she had remained standing there in the middle of her room, entranced, incapable of stirring hand or foot or withdrawing her dry-eyed gaze from that door which had strangely lost its sinister significance.

The spell was broken by the touch of the nurse's hand. "Did you call, Mrs. Grogan? I thought I heard voices. Please go right back to bed. Mercy! your shoulders are dripping with sweat! That's bad. Come, please."

Docilely Ruth permitted the nurse to put her to bed and tuck her in. But sleep never came to her that night. She lay there thinking, thinking; dawn came and daylight, and still the tumult in her mind abated not a jot. A cheat! Was she ​always going to be one? Wasn't it in her to play fair even with William Grogan, who had fought for her like one of the ancient heroes, who had denied himself, toiled in the hot sun for her, and guarded her at night? Her superiority, her bloodstock, her education, her talent, what were these compared with the pure nobility of the heart? A cheat! She doubled her knees, laid her head upon them, and rocked.

She did not comprehend immediately what this whole-hearted self-condemnation signified, that she had reached the turning-point in her outlook upon life. Curtain after curtain was torn aside, and at last there was light in all the corners of her soul. She knew Ruth Warren for what she was.

One morning, some days later, she sprang out of bed, stronger than she had been at any time during her convalescence. Life! Real life, the day-by-day affairs; never again to look at life obliquely, but squarely; to accept the inevitable, clear-eyed, head high; to shoulder cheerfully the burden of each day and cheerfully to lay it down at night; to drive away the false gods of complacency and self-interest. … Not her kind? No, William Grogan was not her kind. Never would she be able to pull herself up to his level. He would have to do that.

Self-analysis is the best of moral tonics. The fact that we can dig into our innermost thoughts and distinguish the good from the bad, that we are able to weigh justly the one against the other, is in itself a spur to noble deeds. By this process we ​become capable of forgiving wrongs, of bursts of real generosity and sacrifice. In face of such magnanimity as William had exhibited Ruth could be no less magnanimous herself.

The determination which stirred her heart was not based upon pride. Sometimes we are credited with lofty actions when in truth we are urged forward only by a sense of shame. But Ruth had found herself. No more self-lies, no more evasions; she stood free at last, on rock, the morass behind her. An obligation was no longer a thing to run around; she would meet each one as it came, honestly and squarely. And there was something in her heart this morning she did not quite understand.

She drew her kimono over her shoulders and walked boldly into William's room. He was not there. The bed had not been touched. It was a man's room, but it was the room of a man who took care of his belongings, who was orderly without being finical. Upon the chairs lay clothes neatly folded; just under the bed were several pairs of shoes, the heels in soldierly alignment. There was no litter at all except in one obscure corner where he had made a bundle of his working-clothes. She recalled what the nurse had told her about his going out in search of work, for fear they might not have money to pay the bills. Her imagination constructed a picture. She saw him laboring under the blistering decks, from early morn until sundown, and then watching half the night at her bedside. All for her! The walls and ​the furnishings of the room became grotesquely twisted, and she knew that her eyes had filled with tears.

She looked down at her ringless hand. She knew now why he had taken off the rings. The singular thoughtfulness of the act! He was a man, strong in the body and strong in the soul. He had the strength, the moral strength, to let her go!

Timidly—for her initial boldness was gone now—she approached the table. Propped against some books books—he was reading to please her—she saw the photograph she had given him in Venice. And there was his pipe. She took it up. She turned it about in her hands. She saw where his strong teeth had worn away the stem. She studied it, not because she was particularly interested in the pipe itself, but because it suggested intimacy; it was almost as if she were touching the man himself. And he was a man.

Suddenly she smiled; and when a woman smiles like that there is either an epic or an idyl in the air. The epic in this instance had already been written.

As she laid down the pipe he came in, and halted by the door in his astonishment.

"Where have you been?" she questioned, with a nod toward the untouched bed.

"Why, I couldn't sleep in here last night; too muggy. So I spent the night over on the grass-plot down by the sea. Slept like a top. And how do you feel this morning?"

"I'm a good deal better."

​He nodded comprehendingly. Her terror gone, she would naturally pick up from now on.

"And I'm crazy to go home. When can we start?"

"Think you'll be strong enough two weeks from to-day?"

"Oh, yes. I'm going to get stronger every minute." She spoke boldly, but she no longer felt boldy. She had entered this room with a great resolve; and now she was afraid. Afraid of what? She did not know, unless it was that William did not look homely this morning.

"That's the way to talk," said he, briskly. "I'll see about passage to-day. Gee! but I'm a homesick pup myself."

It was the prospect of her freedom that had put this new spirit into her. Well, that was logical. But he was going to be very, very glad to walk into Burns, Dolan & Co's, and get into his working-togs again. God bless tobacco and God bless work; a man could manage to forget a good deal by the aid of these two comforts.

He sighed.

"What made you sigh like that?" she asked.

"Who, me? I didn't sigh, did I?"

"Like a house afire. What made you?" Never in all her life had she been so happy. "What made you?" she repeated.

"I can't tell you, sister."

She held out her hand, palm upward. He eyed it, his expression one of mystification. He was poles away from the true meaning of the gesture. ​The fact is, the idyl was about to be written. He advanced toward her irresolutely.

"What's the matter, sister?"

"Don't you ever call me that again, William Grogan! I … I want my rings."

Mystification resolved into blank stupidity.

"Do you hear me? My rings! … Or don't you want me? Are you going to let me go?"

He started to run his fingers through his hair, but she caught his hand and drew it down, clinging to it.

"And you thought I was going to let you go! Oh, man, man! If you could only see yourself a little as I see you. And if God had made it possible for me to love you as you are worthy to be loved! There is no flame or fire in what I offer you; but I'd give you my heart's blood if you wanted it or needed it. There are some dreams that never come true; and yours and mine are like that. But you are the bravest and kindliest man I have ever known, and I think you'll understand me. And don't think for a moment that it's sacrifice on my part. No. I want you; I couldn't get along without you; and I want to belong. What good there is in me you stirred and brought into life. And once I thought I was superior!"

The blood was rushing into his throat and drumming in his ears. She went on. He hadn't the power to interrupt her.

"I will be a true wife to you, William Grogan. I will work for you and with you, I will try to make you happy, help you in your ambition, be with you ​and of you until the end of time. And you thought I was going to let you go! You put me on a pedestal, and you've seen what poor stuff it was made of. But I didn't put you on a pedestal. When my eyes opened you were already on one, all gold. Will you help me climb up there with you? That is, if you want me?"

"Want you?" He dared not touch her yet.

"Ye-ah!" She laughed and tugged at his hand again. "Do you remember the day of the typhoon? You called me a little fool. I wasn't. I was a great and glorious fool. Will you ever forget the feel of the wind and water in your hair? … You held me pretty tight that day. Suppose you do it again and kiss me, being as I am your true wife? And do it before the nurse comes and sends me back to bed!"

CHAPTER XXVII

WILLIAM sat sprawled in a comfortable canvas chair before the door of his room. The long veranda-gallery was deserted except for himself. He smoked, but only enough to keep the coal alive in his pipe. He was watching the rickshaw road through the interstices of the veranda rail.

It was difficult to believe that this was the middle of March. All over New York State, including the great city, there would be alternately rain, snow, sleet, sunshine, and blizzards. If you had offered William his choice he would have selected a blizzard of Wyoming dimensions. This weather here in Singapore took the starch out of a man. No matter how strong and healthy you were, you got tired quickly, the least exertion enervated you. At this moment it was picturesque enough—a bit of blue sea out yonder, and all the rest of the world dusted with gold of a late afternoon.

He fell to musing. He was always doing that nowadays. His wonder was undiminished; in fact, it went on growing and growing. He, William Grogan, here in Singapore, with scarcely a dream left unfulfilled! He worried a little. Things didn't work out that way, not even in his favorite novels.

​Two little tan shoes flitting past his cellar window … and then this! A seven-dollar meerschaum pipe and a ticket around the world in his pocket! He laughed. Instead of the usual "God bless our home" he was going to have "The luck of the Irish" done in blue and red yarn—that is, if Ruth did not object.

Where were Greenwood and Clausen, the lovable old archæologists? Would he ever see them again? He recalled the Arab boy in Cairo, the ride to Suez, the big storm. … Married and settled down! And when he came home nights she'd play for him on the piano, those strange skin-tingling melodies she knew so much about. And there was that Jaipur elephant with the rheumatic leg!

Ruth, who had gone shopping, ought to be coming along soon. They were to sail at nine that night for Hong-Kong and home.

Ambition. How he was going to work when he got back to New York! Burns, Dolan & Co. had loomed very big once upon a time; but now he knew it to be only a step; and there would be other steps, each one higher than the other; and before he rested he was going up high. He knew it; there wasn't a particle of doubt in his mind.

There was only a speck in the amber. They would have to wait a little while for that home with the garden. Four thousand; that was a lot of money just then. That and a small mortgage would have built his castle from moat to turret. ​Well, they were young; they could wait. She wanted it so, and she was captain. When a woman got such an idea in her head, arguments were useless. He could get her point of view readily enough, but she could not get his. She paid for those pearls a thousand times over, but he couldn't convince her of that. One thing, he would never look upon a pearl again without a glow of anger. Sixteen little round white pebbles worth four thousand dollars!

He heard a footfall. He turned and saw Ruth coming toward him. There was a look on her face that quickened his pulse. She forced him back into the chair and perched herself upon the arm, curling her fingers in his hair.

"William Grogan," she said.

"Well, friend wife, what's happened?"

She told him.

Ruth laid the little box on the jeweler's counter. "I should like to price sixteen pearls to match these and fill out the string."

The jeweler emptied the box on a bit of velours. He rolled the pearls about with the tip of his finger, picked one up and scrutinized it carefully. Then he walked over to the window, where he adjusted his glass. More scrutiny. He returned.

"Are you under the impression, madam, that these are real pearls?" he asked, staring curiously at Ruth's pale but interesting face.

"Impression?" she echoed.

"Yes. I can give you sixteen that will match up ​these for about a hundred rupees, madam. These were originally made here in Singapore. Admirable imitations made of fish-scale."

"Fish scale?" Suddenly Ruth laughed.

The jeweler caught the hysterical note. "Yes, madam." His thought was: here is another American tourist who has been rooked.

"Thank you," she said, steadily. "You need not bother to match them, under the circumstances."

"Very well, madam." Deftly he replaced the artificial pearls in the box, which he extended to her with a bow.

Ruth went out into the street, into the mellowing sunshine. She paused at the curb irresolutely. The whole drama unrolled itself before her eyes, and then receded forever. She took off the lid of the box, poured the pearls into her hand, and then let them trickle into the gutter.

THE END

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