going to
make a stand now, I really do! It's fate, and nothing else. There's an
Anchor boat I was to have gone by--via the Cape, you know. She sailed
last week, and I couldn't get off in time. I wanted to wait for the next
as I've not been to the Cape. But the Pater couldn't put up with me for
another week, so out I came! I know why I came! I came to meet you!"

"Do you think so?" she said wonderingly.

"I do! I've never in all my life told the truth about myself before! If
you only knew what that means! I'm too nervous as a rule. But don't you
notice the difference? Of course you're not trained, so you wouldn't
notice as I should. But I'm not even stammering half so much. It's jolly
good of you to listen to me--and it's jolly good for me, because I've no
reason to try to get at you, or to get my own back on you, as I have
with my people all the time."

Marcella felt very small, very helpless. She had a sudden vision of a
man dying in an agony of poisoning while she stood frantic in a doctor's
laboratory, antidotes all round her, but no knowledge in her brain of
which drug to use. And all the time his agony went on, and death drew
nearer. She had not the least idea in the world what to do for Louis
Fame. He frightened her, he disgusted her, he made her feel hungrily
anxious to help, he made her feel responsible and yet helpless, but at
the same time it mattered and challenged her that he had appealed to her
at all. She thought of her father, and remembered with a pang that she
knew nothing about him except superficially. She thought of his books,
but nothing in them seemed helpful. She thought of the Bible, of her
poetry, her legends. They were a blur, a mist. Nothing in them held out
a hand to hail her. There seemed nothing that she could do.

"Oh," she cried passionately, "I'm such a fool. If only I was clever! If
only I knew what to do."

Before she had finished speaking came a flash of insight, and she went
on, in the same breath, "But there's one thing that occurs to me. You
think about yourself far too much. Old Wullie--I'll tell you about him
some day--used to say that if we were quiet and didn't fuss about
ourselves too much God would walk along our lives and help us to kill
beasts--like whisky--"

"God? Oh, I'm fed up with God! I've had too much of that all my life at
home," he said dully.

She had no answer for that, but as she bade him good night at the top of
the companion-way she saw herself in arm