It was
heavy odds-on, that you'd gone to the bottom in that blow, all of you;
but I couldn't give up. We kept cruising, looking up unlikely places.
And, at that, we were on the point of throwing up the sponge when I
picked up a schooner that reported signal fires on No Man's Land.... I
think that clears everything up."

"Yes," said Whitaker, sleepily. "And now, without ingratitude, may I ask
you to lead me to a bath and my bunk. I have just about fifteen minutes
of semi-consciousness to go on."

Nor was this exaggeration; it was hard upon midnight, and he had been
awake since before dawn of a day whose course had been marked by a
succession of increasingly exhaustive emotional crises, following a
night of interrupted and abbreviated rest; add to this the inevitable
reaction from high nervous tension. His reserve vitality seemed barely
sufficient to enable him to keep his eyes open through the rite of the
hot salt-water bath. After that he gave himself blindly into Ember's
guidance, and with a mumbled, vague good night, tumbled into the berth
assigned him. And so strong was his need of sleep that it was not until
ten o'clock the following morning, when the yacht lay at her mooring in
the East River, that Ember succeeded in rousing him by main strength and
good-will.

This having been accomplished, he was left to dress and digest the fact
that his wife had gone ashore an hour ago, after refusing to listen to a
suggestion that Whitaker be disturbed. The note Ember handed him
purported to explain what at first blush seemed a singularly ungrateful
and ungracious freak. It was brief, but in Whitaker's sight eminently
adequate and compensating.

"DEAREST BOY: I won't let them wake you, but I must run away. It's
early and I _must_ do some shopping before people are about. My
house here is closed; Mrs. Secretan is in Maine with the only keys
aside from those at Great West Bay; and I'm a _positive fright_ in
a coat and skirt borrowed from the stewardess. I don't want even
you to see me until I'm decently dressed. I shall put up at the
Waldorf; come there to-night, and we will dine together. Every
fibre of my being loves you.

"MARY."

Obviously not a note to be cavilled at. Whitaker took a serene and
shining face to breakfast in the saloon, under the eyes of Ember.

Veins of optimism and of gratulation like threads of gold ran through
the texture of their talk. There seemed t