the sea day and night for a thousand years--the sea, full of
its promises of unknown things, never quite the same, a slave to its own
impulses. Man is an imitative animal....

"Life's hard enough," he wrote, "without tying yourself down. Don't
think too hardly of me! Shall I make you happier by taking you into
danger? If I succeed you'll be a rich woman; but I shall fail if you're
with me. To look at you makes me soft. At sea a man dreams of all the
good things on land, he'll dream of the heather, and honey--you're like
that; and he'll dream of the apple-trees, and the grass of the
orchards--you're like that; sometimes he only lies on his back and
wishes--and you're like that, most of all like that...."

When I was reading those words I remember a strange, soft, half-scornful
look came over Pasiance's face; and once she said, "But that's all
nonsense, isn't it...?"

Then followed a long passage about what he would gain if he succeeded,
about all that he was risking, the impossibility of failure, if he kept
his wits about him. "It's only a matter of two months or so," he went
on; "stay where you are, dear, or go to my Dad. He'll be glad to have
you. There's my mother's room. There's no one to say 'No' to your
fiddle there; you can play it by the sea; and on dark nights you'll have
the stars dancing to you over the water as thick as bees. I've looked at
them often, thinking of you...."

Pasiance had whispered to me, "Don't read that bit," and afterwards I
left it out.... Then the sensuous side of him shows up: "When I've
brought this off, there's the whole world before us. There are places I
can take you to. There's one I know, not too warm and not too cold,
where you can sit all day in the shade and watch the creepers, and the
cocoa-palms, still as still; nothing to do or care about; all the fruits
you can think of; no noise but the parrots and the streams, and a splash
when a nigger dives into a water-hole. Pasiance, we'll go there! With an
eighty-ton craft there's no sea we couldn't know. The world's a fine
place for those who go out to take it; there's lots of unknown stuff' in
it yet. I'll fill your lap, my pretty, so full of treasures that you
shan't know yourself. A man wasn't meant to sit at home...."

Throughout this letter--for all its real passion--one could feel how the
man was holding to his purpose--the rather sordid purpose of this
venture. He's unconscious of it; for he is in love w