s a heady wine for
an abstemious man. Don't you realize that you are a beautiful woman?"

She looked up into his eyes quickly, but she saw nothing there
indicating flattery, only a somber gravity.

"I should be silly to deny it. I know that had I been a frump, the
colonel would not have snubbed me. I wonder why it is that in life
beauty in a woman is always looked upon with suspicion?"

"Envy provokes that."

She resumed her inclination against the rail again. "After Singapore
it is probable that we shall not meet again. I admit, in my world, I
could not walk upon this free and easy ground. I should have to ask
about your antecedents, what you have done, all about you, in fact.
Then, we should sit in judgment."

"And condemn me, off-hand. That would be perfectly right."

"But I might be one of the dissenting judges."

"That is because you are one woman in a thousand."

"No; I simply have a mind of my own, and often prefer to be guided by
it. I am not a sheep."

Silence. The lap-lap of the water, the long slow rise and fall, and
the dartling flying-fish apparently claimed their attention.

But Warrington saw nothing save the danger, the danger to himself and
to her. At any moment he might fling his arms around her, without his
having the power to resist. She called to him as nothing in the world
had called before. But she trusted him, and because of this he
resolutely throttled the recurring desires. She was right. He had
scorned what she had termed as woman's instinct. She had read him with
a degree of accuracy. In the eyes of God he was a good man, a
dependable man; but he was not impossibly good. He was human enough to
want her, human enough to appreciate the danger in which she stood of
him. He was determined not to fail her. When she went back to her own
world she would carry an unsullied memory of him. But, before God, he
should not have her.

"Why did you do that?" she asked whimsically.

"Do what?"

"Shut your jaws with a snap."

"I was not conscious of the act."

"But you were thinking strongly about something."

"I was. Tell me about the man who looks like me." His gaze roved out
to sea, to the white islands of vapor low-lying in the east. "In what
respect does he resemble me?"

"His hair is yellow, his eyes are blue, and he smiles the same way you
do."

He felt the lump rise and swell in his throat.

"If you stood before a mirror you would see him. But there the