, with all her heart, Edna blessed herself and thanked herself that,
at last, she had been strong enough and brave enough to determine what
she ought to do when she met the captain. That very morning, lying awake
in her bed, she had determined that she would meet him in the same spirit
as that in which he had written to her. She would be very strong. She
would not assume anything. She would not accept the responsibility of
deciding the situation, which responsibility she believed he thought it
right she should assume. She would not have it. If he appeared before her
as the Captain Horn of his letters, he should go away as the man who had
written those letters. If he had come here on business, she would show
him that she was a woman of business.

As she stood waiting, with her eyes upon his card, which lay upon the
table, and Mrs. Cliffs note crumpled up in one hand, she saw the captain
for some minutes before it was possible for him to reach her. She saw him
on board the _Castor_, a tall, broad-shouldered sailor, with his hands in
the pockets of his pea-jacket. She saw him by the caves in Peru, his
flannel shirt and his belted trousers faded by the sun and water, torn
and worn, and stained by the soil on which they so often sat, with his
long hair and beard, and the battered felt hat, which was the last thing
she saw as his boat faded away in the distance, when she stood watching
it from the sandy beach. She saw him as she had imagined him after she
had received his letter, toiling barefooted along the sands, carrying
heavy loads upon his shoulders, living alone night and day on a dreary
desert coast, weary, perhaps haggard, but still indomitable. She saw him
in storm, in shipwreck, in battle, and as she looked upon him thus with
the eyes of her brain, there were footsteps outside her door.

As Captain Horn came through the long corridors and up the stairs,
following the attendant, he saw the woman he was about to meet, and saw
her before he met her. He saw her only in one aspect--that of a tall, too
thin, young woman, clad in a dark-blue flannel suit, unshapely,
streaked, and stained, her hair bound tightly round her head and covered
by an old straw hat with a faded ribbon. This picture of her as he had
left her standing on the beach, at the close of that afternoon when his
little boat pulled out into the Pacific, was as clear and distinct as
when he had last seen it.

A door was opened before him, and he entered Edna