w ahead.' Came in under
her own steam, Second Engineer in command, Chief under restraint in
his berth. Died over at Landore--D.T."

With which abrupt epitaph the Mate reaches for his pants, while I,
knocking out my pipe, go away to turn in.

XXIX

But I cannot sleep. Something lies at the back of my brain--a dull
anxiety, hardly definable to myself. It is possible that I may see her
again, when I come home once more. I shall know for certain in the
morning. And yet it may so happen that it is indeed finished. Nay,
nay, my friend, have patience. I can see you as you read this,
storming about the room, dropping red cigarette ash on the carpet,
visibly perturbed in your mind at my madness.

Yes, yes, I know I forswore it all in a moment of bitter cynicism.
But, _mon ami_, I am a man--a very irregularly balanced man, too,
I often think--and there rises from my soul an exceeding bitter
cry sometimes. You see here my life--barmaid society, ship's
tittle-tattle, unending rough toil. To have but one hold, one haven,
one star to guide--canst blame me, _mon ami_, if I hold desperately to
a tiny hope?

Thinking this out, I walk far out to the pier-head, beneath the
harbour light, and look earnestly into the darkness covering the sea.
Have pity, at least, old friend, when I write in pain.

"_Worth how well, those dark grey eyes,
That hair so dark and dear, how worth,
That a man should strive and agonise,
And taste a very hell on earth
For the hope of such a prize!_"

To which your much-tried patience replies merely, "Humph!" I suppose?
But, old friend, is it not true? Have I not heard your own voice give
way a little, your own hand falter with the eternal cigarette as some
long-hidden memory swept across your mind? So I believe, and so I
understand the terse silence when you rise abruptly from the piano
in the middle of some sad, low improvisation, and I lose you in
the smoke-laden darkness of the room. Life for us moderns has its
difficulties at times, life being, as it were, anything but modern. We
have so many gods, not all of them false, either; but the Voice of the
Dweller in the Innermost brings their temples crashing about our ears,
and we are homeless, godless, atheists indeed.

I do not think this problem has been solved for us yet. It is all very
well for the orthodox to say sneeringly, "Why not believe, like us?
Why stand outside the pearly gates, while Love and Lovers pac