on him she checked off the pros and cons on
her fingers. "On the one hand Eli Tregarthen, being a reserved man, and
brought up on Saaron, probably loves the island after a fashion that
Ruth understands very dimly if at all. I love my sister----"

The Commandant nodded.

"--But all the same I know where she is weak as well as where she is
strong. She never had that feeling for the Islands which helps me to
guess how her husband feels about Saaron. I can't explain it"--here
Vashti opened her palms and lowered them till her arms from the elbows
rested flat upon the table. "Perhaps I can't make you, who were not
born here, understand why it would be grief to me to think of being
buried in any other earth. But I expect that Eli Tregarthen feels it,
and feels that, if they uproot him from Saaron, his life will from that
moment become a different thing, in which he has not learnt--perhaps
never will learn--to take much interest. It's queer that, with just
this difference between us, Ruth should have been the one to stay
behind and I the one to go. But fate is queer.... Ruth is like her
namesake in the Bible; home for her is the roof covering those she
loves, and would be though she changed the Islands for the other end of
the world. Therefore," said Vashti, sagely, "if she feels for her
husband's trouble at all, it would be not as for a trouble that
afflicted them both equally; she would be sorry for him as she would be
if he were hurt or diseased. And you know that silent men, like
Tregarthen, when they are struck by disease, will sometimes hide it
from their wives to the last possible moment--will tell no one, but
least of all their wives."

"Yes, that is true," the Commandant agreed.

"On the other hand"--here Vashti resumed her checking--"Ruth has a
wonderful gift of coaxing people to confide in her even those things
they very much doubt her understanding. She used to get me to tell my
woes for the mere consolation of feeling her cheek against mine. She
had a wonderful knack, too, of obliging me to be open with her, without
ever asking it; and unless those children's faces and talk misled me
quite, they were formed in a house where the parents keep no secrets
from one another.... You can always tell."

This was news to the Commandant; and he admitted that, as an old
bachelor, he had never observed it.

"Always!" insisted Vashti, nodding. "They spoke of their father quite
as if he were one of themselves; which is not