t was loneliness. Perhaps he had lost his loved ones and was
wandering over the world seeking forgetfulness. But he would die if
he continued in this course. They were alike in one phase--loveless
and lonely. If he died, here in this hotel, who would care? Or if
she died, who would care?

A queer desire blossomed in her heart: to go to him, urge him to
see the folly of trying to forget. Of what use was the temporary
set-back to memory, when it always returned with redoubled
poignancy?

Then came another thought, astonishing. This was the first young
man who had drawn from her something more than speculative
interest. True, on board the ships she had watched young men from
afar, but only with that normal curiosity which is aroused in the
presence of any new species. But after Singapore she found herself
enduing them with the characteristics of the heroes in the novels
she had just read for the first time. This one was Henry Esmond,
that one the melancholy Marius, and so forth and so on; never any
villains. It wasn't worth while to invest imaginatively a man with
evil projects simply because he was physically ugly.

Some day she wanted to be loved as Marius loved Cosette; but there
was another character which bit far more deeply into her mind. Why?
Because she knew him in life, because, so long as she could
remember, he had crossed and recrossed her vision--Sidney Carton.
The wastrel, the ne'er-do-well, who went mostly nobly to a fine
end.

Here, then, but for the time and place, might be another Sidney
Carton. Given the proper incentive, who could say that he might not
likewise go nobly to some fine end? She thrilled. To find the
incentive! But how? Thither and yon the idea roved, seeking the
way. But always this new phase in life which civilization called
convention threw up barrier after barrier.

She could not go to him with a preachment against strong drink; she
knew from experience that such a plan would be wasted effort. Had
she not seen them go forth with tracts in their pockets and grins
in their beards? To set fire to his imagination, to sting his sense
of chivalry into being, to awaken his manhood, she must present
some irresistible project. She recalled that day of the typhoon and
the sloop crashing on the outer reefs. The heroism of two beach
combers had saved all on board and their own manhood as well.

"Are you returning to Hong-Kong to-morrow by the day boat?"

For a moment Ruth was astonished at