the fear of other men who would come thronging
about her, in the other life, where he could not follow.

Around the forked promontory to the east, the lights of the little
packet-boat for England appeared, like the red cinder in a pipe,
slipping toward the horizon. It was the signal for a lover's embrace,
conceived long ago in fancy and kept in tenderness.

"Madeleine," he said, touching her arm. "There it is--our little boat."

"Ah! _le p'tit bateau_--with its funny red and green eyes."

She turned and raised her lips to his; and the kiss, which she did not
give but permitted, seemed only fraught with an ineffable sadness, the
end of all things, the tearing asunder and the numbness of separation.
She returned to her pose, her eyes fixed on the little packet, saying:

"It's late."

"Yes."

"It goes fast."

"Very."

They spoke mechanically, and then not at all. The dread of the morning
was too poignant to approach the things that must be said. Suddenly,
with the savage directness of the male to plunge into the pain which
must be undergone, he began:

"It was like poison--that kiss."

She turned, forgetting her own anguish in the pain in his voice,
murmuring, "Ben, my poor Ben."

"So you will go--to-morrow," he said bitterly, "back to the great public
that will possess you, and I shall remain--here, alone."

"It must be so."

He felt suddenly an impulse he had not felt before, an instinct to make
her suffer a little. He said brutally:

"But you want to go!"

She did not answer, but, in the obscurity, he knew her large eyes were
searching his face. He felt ashamed of what he had said, and yet because
she made no protestation, he persisted:

"You have left off your jewels, those jewels you can't do without."

"Not to-night."

"You who are never happy without them--why not to-night?"

As, carried away by the jealousy of what lay beyond, he was about to
continue, she laid her fingers on his lips, with a little brusk, nervous
movement of her shoulders.

"Don't--you don't understand."

But he understood and he resented the fact that she should have put
aside the long undulating rope of pearls, the rings of rubies and
emeralds that seemed as natural to her dark beauty as the roses to the
spring. He had tried to understand her woman's nature, to believe that
no memory yet lingered about them, to accept without question what had
never belonged longed to their life together, and remembering what he
ha