h more we need you than your gentleman does, my dear
sister."

It was plain to them all that Colonel Markin had very special views
about his dear sister. The other dear sisters looked on with pleasurable
interest, admitting the propriety of it, as Colonel Markin walked up and
down the deck with Laura, examining her lovely nature, "drawing her out"
on the subject of her faith and her assurance. It was natural, as he
told her, that in her peculiar situation she should have doubts and
difficulties. He urged her to lay bare her heart, and she laid it bare.
One evening--it was heavenly moonlight on the Indian Ocean, and they
were two days past Aden on the long south-east run to Ceylon--she came
and stood before him with a small packet in her hand. She was all in
white, and more like an angel than Markin expected ever to see anything
in this world, though as to the next his anticipations may have been
extravagant.

"Now I wonder," said he, "where you are going to sit down?"

A youngster in the Police got up and pushed his chair forward, but Laura
shook her head.

"I am going out there," she said, pointing to the farthermost stern
where passengers were not encouraged to sit, "and I want to consult
you."

Markin got up. "If there's anything pressin' on your mind," he said,
"you can't do better."

Laura said nothing until they were alone with the rushing of the screw,
two Lascars, some coils of rope, and the hand-steering gear. Then she
opened the packet. "These," she said, "these are pressing on my mind."

She held out a string of pearls, a necklace of pearls and turquoises, a
heavy band bracelet studded, Delhi fashion, with gems, one or two lesser
fantasies.

"Jewellery!" said Markin. "Real or imitation?"

"So far as that goes they are good. Mr. Lindsay gave them to me. But
what have I to do with jewels, the very emblem of the folly of the
world, the desire that itches in palms that know no good works, the
price of sin!" She leaned against the masthead as she spoke, the wind
blew her hair and her skirt out toward the following seas. With that
look in her eyes she seemed a creature who had alighted on the ship but
who could not stay.

Colonel Markin held the pearls up in the moonlight.

"They must have cost something to buy," he said.

Laura was silent.

"And so they're a trouble to you. Have you taken them to the Lord in
prayer?"

"Oh, many times."

"Couldn't seem to hear any answer?"

"The only answer I