d, chokingly. "He couldn't say
it as you--say it."

"Why not?"

"He's like I am. _Dad's afraid._"

The storm swept on, leaving the waves rough behind it, and Richard at
last put Marie-Louise to bed with a sleeping powder. Then he went to hunt
up Eve. He was very tired and it was very late. The night had passed, and
the dawn would soon be coming up over the horizon. He found Pip in the
smoking room. Eve had gone to bed. Everybody had gone to bed. It had been
a terrible storm.

Richard agreed that it had been terrible. He was glad that Eve could
sleep. He couldn't understand why Austin had allowed Marie-Louise to take
such a trip. Her fear of storms was evidently quite uncontrollable. And
she was at all times hysterical and high-strung.

Pip was not interested in Marie-Louise. "Eve lost her nerve at the last."

Richard was solicitous. "I'm sorry. I wanted to come down, but I couldn't
leave Marie-Louise. Eve's normal, and she'll be all right as soon as the
storm stops. But Marie-Louise may suffer for days. The sooner she gets on
shore the better."

He went on deck, and looked out upon a gray wind-swept world.

Then the sun came up, and there was a great light upon the waters.

All the next day Marie-Louise lay in a long chair. "Dad told me not to
come," she confessed to Richard. "I've been this way before. But I
wouldn't listen."

"If I had been your father," Richard said, "you would have listened, and
you would have stayed at home."

She grinned. "You can't be sure. Nobody can be sure. I don't like to take
orders."

"Until you learn to take orders you aren't going to amount to much,
Marie-Louise."

"I amount to a great deal. And your ideas are--old-fashioned; that's what
your Eve says, Dr. Dicky."

She looked at him through her long eyelashes. "What's the matter with
your Eve?"

"What do you mean?"

"She is punishing you, but you don't know it. She is down-stairs playing
bridge with Pip and Tony and Win, and leaving you alone to meditate on
your sins. And you aren't meditating. You are talking to me. I am going
to write a poem about a Laggard Lover. I'll make you a shepherd boy who
sits on the hills and watches his sheep. And when the girl who loves him
calls to him, he refuses to go--he still watches--his sheep."

He looked puzzled. "I don't know in the least what you are talking
about."

"You are the shepherd. Your work is the sheep--Eve is the girl. Your work
will always be more to you than the