e out,
the vessel was like a ghostly fabric. Ferrier took charge of the two
girls, and Tom entertained the elder ladies with voluminous oratory.

The surgeon was uneasy; the sudden splendour of the moon was lost on
him, and he only thought of her as he might of a street lamp.

"I'm glad the moon has come, Miss Dearsley. If there is no chance of her
clouding over, I shall ask the skipper to slip us into the thick of the
fleet, and I'll take the boat."

"You are very good to take the risk after that dreadful time."

"I'm afraid I only follow a professional instinct. One thing is certain,
I shall stay out here for the winter and do what I can."

Girls are tied by conventions; they cannot even express admiration in
fitting language; they may giggle or cackle so that every ripple of
laughter and every turn of a phrase sounds nauseously insincere. Marion
Dearsley durst not talk frankly with this fine fellow, but she said
enough.

"I'm not sure that you will not be better here than spending time in
society--that is, if you have no pressing ambition, as most men have. I
mean ambition for personal success and praise, and position. My brother
always spoke of Parliament, and I suppose you would aim at the Royal
Society. Girls have little scope, but I should imagine you must suffer."

"Maisie, you're the dearest old preacher in the world. Why don't you
persuade Mr. Ferrier to be a great man on shore instead of coming out
here to be bruised, and drowned, and sent home, and all that kind of
thing?"

Then Miss Lena thoughtfully added, as in soliloquy--

"But he might come to be like old Professor Blabbs who makes a noise
with his soup, or Sir James Brennan with the ounce of snuff round his
studs. No. Perhaps Maisie's right." "I have plenty of ambition--I am
burning with it, and I have an intuition that this is one of the widest
and finest fields in the world--for impersonal ambition, that is,
ambition above money, and so forth."

Then Ferrier, with a touch of pride quite unusual in him, said--

"I'm not persuaded that I've done so badly in the ambitious way up to
now. This should be a fair change."

Then they stopped and watched the shadowy vessels stealing away into the
luminous gloom. I hope they loved the sight; the thought of it makes all
Beethoven sing over my nerves. The water was lightly crisped, and every
large sigh of the low wind seemed to blow a sheet of diamonds over the
quivering path of the moon; the light