night, listened for a moment to the
straining hull and wind shrilling aloft, and then rose and went
forward again to examine the mooring. A second hawser now reached into
the darkness. Halvard had been on deck and put out another anchor. The
wind beat salt and stinging from the sea, utterly dissipating the
languorous breath of the land, the odors of the exotic, flowering
trees.

IX

In the morning a storm, driving out of the east, enveloped the coast
in a frigid, lashing rain. The wind mounted steadily through the
middle of the day with an increasing pitch accompanied by the basso of
the racing seas. The bay grew opaque and seamed with white scars.
After the meridian the rain ceased, but the wind maintained its
volume, clamoring beneath a leaden pall.

John Woolfolk, in dripping yellow oilskins, occasionally circled the
deck of his ketch. Halvard had everything in a perfection of order.
When the rain stopped, the sailor dropped into the tender and with a
boat sponge bailed vigorously. Soon after, Woolfolk stepped out upon
the beach. He was without any plan but the determination to put aside
whatever obstacles held Millie from him. This rapidly crystallized
into the resolve to take her with him before another day ended. His
feeling for her, increasing to a passionate need, had destroyed the
suspension, the deliberate calm of his life, as the storm had
dissipated the sunny peace of the coast.

He paused before the ruined facade, weighing her statement that it
would have been better if he had not returned; and he wondered how
that would affect her willingness, her ability, to see him today. He
added the word "ability" instinctively and without explanation. And he
decided that, in order to have any satisfactory speech with her, he
must come upon her alone, away from the house. Then he could force her
to hear to the finish what he wanted to say; in the open they might
escape from the inexplicable inhibition that lay upon her expression
of feeling, of desire. It would be necessary, at the same time, to
avoid the notice of anyone who would warn her of his presence. This
precluded his waiting at the familiar place on the rotting wharf.

Three marble steps, awry and moldy, descended to the lawn from a
French window in the side of the desolate mansion. They were
screened by a tangle of rose-mallow, and there John Woolfolk seated
himself--waiting.

The wind shrilled about the corner of the house; there was a mourn