ed. The
expression in his eyes made her forget it.

"I wanted something of you."

"What?"

He let the oars go, and sat down on the little seat. They were close to
each other now. The sides of the boats touched. He did not answer her
question.

"I know I've no business to speak to you," he said. "No business to come
after you. I know that. But I was always a selfish, violent, headlong
brute, and it seems I can't change."

"But what do you want with me?"

Suddenly she remembered--put her hands up to her face with a swift
gesture, then dropped them again. What did it matter now? He was the
last man who would look upon her in life. And now that she remembered
her own condition she saw his. She saw the terror of his life in his
marred features, aged, brutalised by excess. She saw, and was glad for a
moment, as if she met someone unexpectedly on her side of the stream of
fate. Let him look upon her. She was looking upon him.

"What do you want?" she repeated.

"I want a saviour," he said, staring always straight at her, and
speaking without tenderness.

"A saviour!"

For a moment she thought of the Bible, of religion; then of her
sensation that she had been caught by a torturer who would not let her
go.

"Have you come to me because you think I can tell you of saviour?" she
said.

And she began to laugh.

"But don't you see me?" she exclaimed. "Don't you see what I am now?"

Suddenly she felt angry with him because his eyes did not seem to see
the dreadful change in her appearance.

"Don't you think I want a saviour too?" she exclaimed.

"I don't think about you," he said with a sort of deliberate brutality.
"I think about myself. Men generally do when they come to women."

"Or go away from them," she said.

She was thinking of Robin then, and Fritz.

"Did you know Robin Pierce was here to-day?" she asked.

"Yes. I saw him leave you."

"You saw--but how long have you been watching?"

"A long time."

"Where do you come from?"

He pointed towards the distant lights behind her and before him.

"Opposite. I was to have stayed with Ulford in Casa Felice. I'm staying
with him over there."

"With Sir Donald?"

"Yes. He's ill. He wants somebody."

"Sir Donald's afraid of me now," she said, watching him closely. "I told
him to live with his memory of me. Will he do that?"

"I think he will. Poor old chap! he's had hard knocks. They've made him
afraid of life."

"Why didn't you keep your memor