can go on for ever like this,
pretending love? Men! I use them, my friend. The lover of my heart is
here, and you ask me to go out on that cursed water to a country where
it is dark wet fog all the time. What should I do there? My God, are you
mad? Now I shall go to Europe, and for once I shall live. Ah! The
message! Here!" She dragged a blank page from a yellow paper-covered
volume lying on a cedar-wood console and hunted for a pencil. With a
fragment of black crayon she began to scrawl her name in staggering
capitals. "So!" she muttered. "Now I shall put the words _liebe dich_.
Sacre! When I go to Europe I will learn this writing--or have a
secretary. There! It is enough for my dear lunatic. Take it!" She folded
it and gave it to the youth who stood by the door dejectedly. "Ask for
the Herr Leutnant Lietherthal. Go down and eat first." She gave him a
pat on the shoulder that seemed to put a fresh stream of life into him,
and he disappeared.

"Take care, Esther, do not tell him a word of this. Or thy husband
either. He might speak in forgetfulness."

"It is nothing to me," muttered Esther. "I like him, that is all. And
fidelity is best."

"Fidelity!" said Evanthia slowly. "And is not this fidelity? Have I not
followed the lover of my heart across the world? If the father of thy
boy came up here and knocked at the gat.... You talk! I am not a
white-faced Frank girl to be a slave of an Englishman! He gives me all
his money here, yes. But in his England, when I am shut up in the fog
and rain, how much will I get, _hein_?" her voice rose to a shout, a
brazen clangour of the throat, and her hand shot out before her,
clenched, as though she were about to hurl thunderbolts.

"Very well," assented Esther in a low tone, "but you don't know if the
lover of your heart wants you any more. The lovers of the heart are
funny fish," she added grimly.

"Prrtt! You are right," said Evanthia in an ordinary tone. "Did I say I
was going away to-night, stupid?"

"I see the light of the boat," said Esther. "Perhaps my husband is with
him. I must go back to my house."

"No! Stay here a little." Evanthia laid hold of her. "To-night I must
have someone with me. I am shaken in my mind. I shall want to shriek.
Stay."

"It is at the jetty," said Esther soberly. She looked out into a dense
darkness, and in the lower distance she could see a tiny light where the
launch had run alongside the old bath-house jetty. And then the light
went ou