her couples gradually took the
floor and the reel began. Joan drifted through the figures with the
grace of a wind-blown leaf. Paul danced with rollicking abandon,
seldom taking his eyes from Joan's face. When the last mad whirl was
over, Joan's brother came up and told her in an angry tone to go into
the next room and dance no more, since she would dance with only one
man. Joan looked at Paul. That look meant that she would do as he, and
none other, told her. Paul nodded easily--he did not want any fuss
just then--and the girl went obediently into the room. As she turned
from him, Paul coolly reached out his hand and took the rose from her
hair; then, with a triumphant glance around the room, he went out.

The autumn night was very clear and chill, with a faint, moaning wind
blowing up from the northwest over the sea that lay shimmering before
the door. Out beyond the cove the boats were nodding and curtsying on
the swell, and over the shore fields the great red star of the
lighthouse flared out against the silvery sky. Paul, with a whistle,
sauntered down the sandy lane, thinking of Joan. How mightily he loved
her--he, Paul King, who had made a mock of so many women and had never
loved before! Ah, and she loved him. She had never said so in words,
but eyes and tones had said it--she, Joan Shelley, the pick and pride
of the Harbour girls, whom so many men had wooed, winning their
trouble for their pains. He had won her; she was his and his only, for
the asking. His heart was seething with pride and triumph and passion
as he strode down to the shore and flung himself on the cold sand in
the black shadow of Michael Brown's beached boat.

Byron Lyall, a grizzled, elderly man, half farmer, half fisherman, and
Maxwell Holmes, the Prospect schoolteacher, came up to the boat
presently. Paul lay softly and listened to what they were saying. He
was not troubled by any sense of dishonour. Honour was something Paul
King could not lose since it was something he had never possessed.
They were talking of him and Joan.

"What a shame that a girl like Joan Shelley should throw herself away
on a man like that," Holmes said.

Byron Lyall removed the pipe he was smoking and spat reflectively at
his shadow.

"Darned shame," he agreed. "That girl's life will be ruined if she
marries him, plum' ruined, and marry him she will. He's bewitched
her--darned if I can understand it. A dozen better men have wanted
her--Connor Mitchell for one