speculations. The light had come back upon her face.

"I will say good-bye now," said Captain Filbert. "I have a meeting at
half-past five. Shall we have a word of prayer before I go?"

She plainly looked for immediate acquiescence; but Miss Howe said,
"Another time, dear."

"Oh, why not?" exclaimed Duff Lindsay. Hilda put the semblance of a
rebuke into her glance at him, and said, "Certainly not."

"Oh," Captain Filbert cried, "don't think you can escape that way! I
will pray for you long and late to-night, and ask my lieutenant to do so
too. Don't harden your heart, Miss Howe--the Lord is waiting to be
compassionate."

The two were silent, and Laura walked toward the door. Just where the
sun slanted into the room and made leaf-patterns on the floor, she
turned and stood for an instant in the full tide of it; and it set all
the loose tendrils of her pale yellow hair in a little flame, and gave
the folds of the flesh-coloured sari that fell over her
shoulder the texture of draperies so often depicted as celestial. The
sun sought into her face, revealing nothing but great purity of line and
a clear pallor, except where below the wide, light-blue eyes two
ethereal shadows brushed themselves. Under the intentness of their gaze
she made as if she would pass out without speaking; and the tender
curves of her limbs, as she wavered, could not have been matched out of
mediaeval stained glass. But her courage, or her conviction, came back to
her at the door, and she raised her hand and pointed at Hilda.

"She's got a soul worth saving."

Then the portiere fell behind her, and nothing was said in the room
until the pad of her bare feet had ceased upon the stair.

"She came out in the _Bengal_ with us," Hilda told him--this is not a
special instance of it, but she could always gratify Duff Lindsay in
advance--"and she was desperately seedy, poor girl. I looked after her a
little, but it was mistaken kindness, for now she's got me on her mind.
And as the two hundred and eighty million benighted souls of India are
her continual concern, I seem a superfluity. To think of being the two
hundred and eighty-first millionth oppresses one."

Lindsay listened with a look of accustomed happiness.

"You weren't at that end of the ship!" he demanded.

"Of course I was--we all were. And some of us, little Miss Stace, for
instance--thankful enough at the prospect of cold meat and sardines for
tea every night for a whole month. And af