setting was the sea, the wilderness, whose life was action, who
was ignorant of art, philosophy, the convenances, who was a figure of
scorn to every educated eye when caught against the background of
Civilisation.

In three beats of a pendulum all this passed through her mind.

Then she said to the manager:

"Quite so. I understand. I must thank you very much for your real
kindness. I shall give this man a sum of money, and this afternoon you
will be free of him. He can find shelter at a sailors' home--I have
heard of such places."

"Oh, Mon Dieu! Yes," said the manager, vastly relieved, "and either I or
Fritz, my head waiter, will serve him with his food. Fritz is a man of
temperament and knowledge and I will explain to him."

He hurried off and she was left alone in the corridor.

She opened the door of the little sitting-room. The leper was seated
hunched on his chair just as she had seen him sitting often on a rock;
he was surrounded with a cloud of tobacco smoke.

She had seen the loneliness of Kerguelen but that was nothing to this.

Poor Raft. The very chairs and tables shouted at him; he looked
ridiculous. How in her wildest dreams could she have entertained the
idea of holding him to her, here?

He would have looked more ridiculous only that he looked, what he felt,
forlorn. The place was beginning to tell on him, used to the rough and
the open; the smooth and the closed were getting at him.

When he saw her he took the pipe from his mouth and pressed the burning
tobacco down with his finger nervously, the same finger she had sucked
once when parched with thirst.

She saw, as a matter of fact, that he was nervous, if the term could
apply to such a huge and powerful organism, and the fear came to her
that if left alone he might bolt before she could conduct him in person
to the Sailors' Home.

Standing with the door held half open she nodded to him.

"I want you to stay here," said she, "till I come back. I have to talk
to all those people you saw and I may be a couple of hours. That man
will bring you something to eat--you don't mind my leaving you here?"

"Oh, I don't mind," said Raft "but you'll be wanting something to eat
yourself."

"I'll get it."

"You'll come back, sure?"

"Sure."

She laughed, nodded to him, and closed the door. Her cheeks were
flushed and her eyes bright, she was strangely worked up; a touch might
have sent her into a storm of anger or a burst of tears.

In the