rom the world, entrance into
which he had craved, had stooped down to understand and was telling him
that all was well. He drew his chair a little closer to hers.

"We are all more or less impostors," she said. "Does any one, I wonder,
go about the world telling everybody what they really are, how they
really live? Dear me, how unpleasant and uncomfortable it would be! You
are so wise, my new friend. You know the value of impulses. You tell me
the truth, and I am your friend. I do not need facts, because facts count
for little. I judge by what lies behind, and I understand. Do not weary
me with explanations. I like what you have told me. Only, of course, your
work must have suffered from surroundings like that. Will it be better
for you now?"

"I shall land in New York," he told her, "with at least a thousand
pounds. That is about as much as I have spent in ten years. There is the
possibility of other money. Concerning that--well, I can't make up my
mind. The thousand pounds, of course, is stolen."

"So I gathered," she remarked. "Do you continue, may I ask, to be Douglas
Romilly, the manufacturer?"

He shook his head a little vaguely.

"I haven't thought," he confessed. "But of course I don't. I have risked
everything for the chance of a new life. I shall start it in a new way
and under a new name."

He was suddenly conscious of her pity, of a moistness in her eyes as she
looked at him.

"I think," she said, "that you must have been very miserable. Above all
things, now, whatever you may have done for your liberty, don't be
fainthearted. If you are in trouble or danger you must come to me. You
promise?"

"If I may," he assented fervently.

"Now I must hear the play as it stood in your thoughts when you wrote
it," she insisted. "I have a fancy that it will sound a little gloomy. Am
I right?"

He laughed.

"Of course you are! How could I write in any other way except through the
darkened spectacles? However, there's a way out--of altering it, I mean.
I feel flashes of it already. Listen."

The story expanded with relation. He no longer felt confined to its
established lines. Every now and then he paused to tell her that this or
that was new, and she nodded appreciatively. They walked for a time,
watched the seagulls, and bade their farewell to the Irish coast.

"You will have to re-write that play for me," she said, a little
abruptly, as she paused before the companionway. "I am going down to my
room fo