nd and
rising, "but on one condition."

"Name it."

"That from this hour you be your old self, without restraint, and let
me be mine."

"I promise faithfully."

"Then, you can help me down that steep companion-way and I'll go to
bed."

He held her hand with firm grasp as she picked her way down the steps.
Her eyes looked straight into the depths of his as her face almost
touched him. He was sure that she had felt the mad impulse to take her
in his arms that quivered in every nerve and muscle of his body, for
his hand trembled and she smiled.

At her stateroom door she paused, smiled again and said:

"Good night."

His answer was very low.

"Good night."

But he didn't spend a good night. The longer he thought of it the more
sinister and dangerous he felt his position. At last he squarely faced
the fact that his desire for Nan had increased a hundred-fold by the
fact that he had lost her, and that it might become a dangerous mania
under the conditions of physical nearness which this little schooner
made inevitable.

As he sat in the darkness in his stateroom he could hear every sound in
the adjoining one which she occupied as plainly as if the thin
panelling of wood were not between them.

He was a fool to be caught in such a trap! His love had been too big
and serious a tragedy to end in a vulgar intrigue. There was something
painful and stupefying in the spell which she threw over his senses. He
realized, too, that she had put him practically at her mercy by the
promise he had given. And what made it all the more dangerous was that
she was sincere, and apparently sure of herself.

He made up his mind to cut his trip short on some pretext, and in the
meantime he would devote himself faithfully to an attempt to start
Bivens on the road to a recovery of his shattered health.

At eight o'clock the next morning the black nose of the _Buccaneer_
slowly felt her way into Hog Island Inlet on the shores of old Virginia
and dropped her anchor in the deep waters of the channel back of the
sand spit on which the U.S. Life Saving station is built.

As Stuart stepped on deck a great flock of thousands of brant swept in
from sea and pitched on the bar beyond the channel. A cloud of black
ducks circled gracefully overhead and slowly spread out on their
feeding grounds beyond the brant.

His heart gave a throb of primitive joy. He was a boy again, and the
world was young.

"Confound them!" he cried. "I'll show