I
hadn't been a cur and a fool. If I had only asked what I can't ask of
you now'; and, Holcombe, she flushed just like a little girl, and
laughed, and said, 'Oh, will you, Lloyd?' And you see that ugly iron
chapel up there, with the corrugated zinc roof and the wooden cross on
it, next to the mosque? Well, that's where we went first, right from
this wharf before I let her go to a hotel, and old Ridley, the English
rector, he married us, and we had a civil marriage too. That's what
she did for me. She had the whole wide globe to live in, and she gave
it up to come to Tangier, because I had no other place but Tangier,
and she's made my life for me, and I'm happier here than I ever was
before anywhere, and sometimes I think--I hope--that she is, too."
Carroll's lips moved slightly, and his hands trembled on the rail. He
coughed, and his voice was gentler when he spoke again. "And so," he
added, "that's why I felt it last night when you refused to meet her.
You were right, I know, from your way of thinking, but we've grown
careless down here, and we look at things differently."

Holcombe did not speak, but put his arm across the other's shoulder,
and this time Carroll did not shake it off. Holcombe pointed with his
hand to a tall, handsome woman with heavy yellow hair who was coming
toward them, with her hands in the pockets of her reefer. "There is
Mrs. Carroll now," he said. "Won't you present me, and then we can row
out and see the man-of-war?"

II

The officers returned their visit during the day, and the American
Consul-General asked them all to a reception the following afternoon.
The entire colony came to this, and Holcombe met many people, and
drank tea with several ladies in riding-habits, and iced drinks with
all of the men. He found it very amusing, and the situation appealed
strongly to his somewhat latent sense of humor. That evening in
writing to his sister he told of his rapid recovery in health, and of
the possibility of his returning to civilization.

"There was a reception this afternoon at the Consul-General's," he
wrote, "given to the officers of our man-of-war, and I found myself in
some rather remarkable company. The Consul himself has become rich by
selling his protection for two hundred dollars to every wealthy Moor
who wishes to escape the forced loans which the Sultan is in the habit
of imposing on the faithful. For five hundred dollars he will furnish
any one of them with a piece of