urriedly in a
whisper, 'but the fact is, I am not a passionately devoted daughter. I
used to think I was. All the girls at school used to rave about their
parents, so I raved about mine. Girls are fools,' she remarked,
abruptly.

"'In what way--raving?' I asked.

"'Well,' she said, 'they go on and on, meaning no harm, I suppose. You
know we used to tell each other we had the most wonderful sweethearts.
One girl had a boy in New Zealand. Another was secretly engaged to a man
who was in China. All very far away! So I wasn't to be done, and I
bragged about a lover in Siberia. When they wanted to know about him I
made up a long story. I said he was a Russian and I had met him in
London and he'd gone back to Russia and got arrested and sent to
Siberia. It was as true as their yarns, I dare say. And it's a fact I
used to imagine myself in love with a tall fair man with a yellow beard.
There was a Russian at father's house in Pimlico once, but he was an old
cuckoo from the Consulate. I didn't like him.'

"'I don't think, my dear,' I said, 'that I want to know any more about
it. I believe I understand.'

"'Yes,' she answered. 'I believe you do. I believed you would understand
sooner or later, when I sent for you in London. I was a beast, then, but
I don't regret it after all. I feel I could be anything to you, and
you'd understand. Oh!' she muttered, clinging to me for a moment and
staring across to where the sun, already set beyond the purple
mountains, sent up broad bars of gold and crimson, reflected in the calm
waters of the Gulf. 'Oh! How I have treated you!' and she sank into a
silence of passionate regret that lasted until the darkness enfolded us
and we had entered the long desolate _faubourg_."

Mr. Spenlove stopped and rose from his seat on his little camp-stool.
Walking to and fro in front of the recumbent forms of his brother
officers, his hands in his pockets, his head on his breast, he seemed
once again to have forgotten them. And they, perceiving by this time the
impropriety of mundane interruptions at such a moment, awaited his
resumption in silence.

"After all," he remarked, suddenly stopping and staring down at the
deck, "I lost her. I have said to you, at the beginning, that if her
story means anything it means that love was nothing, and I had this in
mind, for I lost her. And of what avail, I ask you, is an emotion so
independent of our individual destinies that it can culminate at the
very moment o