fices. And I won't
take money from them--or anybody. This suits me well enough. Probably
I'm not ambitious."

"Then if it suits you," Molly began, but he put his hand over hers.

"It doesn't suit me to love any woman as much as I've loved you since
Buenos Ayres," he said, "and feel that to get her I must give up this
and settle down into a smelly office. It doesn't suit me to find that
life is just hell without her, but to know that if I know anything
about myself I couldn't live any other way but this, and that no decent
man could ask a woman to lead the rolling-stone life that I lead--she
wouldn't, anyhow."

Molly's eyes were fastened on the bow of the ship's boat; her heart
pounded against the rail; she had never felt so frightened in her life.

And suddenly she became aware that she was staring at the letters
E-L-L-A, and they looked very tiny, like the letters of the Lord's
Prayer written in carved ivory toys, and something she had not thought
of since she first left New York flashed into her mind, and she
trembled slightly. Then all the vexed and broken, many-coloured
fragments of her life clicked and settled into place, quietly and
inevitably, as they do in a child's kaleidoscope, and the final pattern
stood out, finished. She smiled slightly and thinks that perhaps she
prayed. Then,

"Why don't you give the woman a chance?" said Molly Dickett.

* * * * *

Mr. Dickett pushed little Penelope gently off his knee and stroked a
whitening whisker.

"Molly's baby was a boy, mother--I know you'd want to hear," he said.

Mrs. Dickett was silent.

"Her husband's bought a third interest in the boat," he went on firmly,
"and she says he'll probably be captain some day."

"Indeed," said Mrs. Dickett.

"They've stopped carrying passengers and the rooms are fitted up for
them, quite private, she writes, and the boy weighed nine pounds. I'm
thinking of going down to see them, when they get in to this country
again, mother. Would you care to see her husband's picture? He's a
fine looking chap--six feet, she writes."

"I don't care about it," said Mrs. Dickett, through thin lips. "It is
a relief, however, to learn that she is no longer a chambermaid."

"Come, come, mother, the ship's boy did all the emptying, you know,"
Mr. Dickett urged tolerantly. "It seems a roving sort of life, to us,
I know, and unsettled, but if they like it, why I can't see any real
harm..."

"Taste