y, 'Lightmark, R.A.?
Who the devil was he?'"

By this time the young moon had risen, and its cold light shimmered
on the misty river. Rainham refilled his pipe, and opened the window
still more widely.

"By Jove, what a night!" he said. "What a night for a painter! I am
sure you are longing to be out in it. I'm afraid there's nothing to
show you in the dock at present; you must come down again when
there's a ship coming in at night. I feel quite reconciled to the
dock on those occasions. Shall we go for a stroll in the
moonlight--and seek impressions?"

Oswyn's restless humour welcomed the suggestion, and he was already
waiting, his soft felt hat in one ungloved hand, and a heavy,
quaintly carved stick in the other.

They stood for some minutes on the little, square, pulpit-like
landing, at the top of the creaking wooden staircase, which led down
the side of the building from office to yard, listening to the faint
drip of the water through the sluice-gates; the wail of a child
outside the walls, and the pacing step of the woman who hushed it;
the distant intermittent roar of the song which reached them through
the often opened doors of a public-house. Presently the
night-watchman lumbered out of his sentry-box by the gates, his dim
lantern sounding pools of mysterious darkness, which were untouched
by the solitary gas-lamp in the street outside, and which the faint
moonlight only seemed to intensify.

Oswyn drew in a long breath of the cool, caressing air, momentarily
straightening his bent figure. Then he gave a short laugh, which
startled Rainham from the familiar state of half-smiling reverie to
which he was always so ready to recur.

"The last time I saw the river like this," he said--"the last time
I was down here at night, that is--was when I went with a Malay
model of mine to his favourite opium den."

"You have not repeated the experiment?" asked Rainham absently.

"No; not yet, at any rate. It made my hand shake so damnably for a
week afterwards that I couldn't paint. Besides, I doubt if I could
find the place again. I couldn't get the Malay to come away at all;
he is probably there still."

"Beg your pardon, sir," said the night-watchman hoarsely, when they
reached the bottom of the difficult staircase, "there's been a young
woman here asking for a gentleman of the name of Crichton. I told
her there weren't no one of that name here, and Mr. Bullen, sir, he
saw her, and sent her away. I thought I h