VI

King Vidor’s “Wild Oranges.”A Goldwyn Picture.A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.

ONthe morning following the breaking of his water cask John Woolfolk saw the slender figure of Millie on the beach. She waved and called, her voice coming thin and clear across the water:“Are visitors—encouraged?”He sent Halvard in with the tender, and as they approached, dropped a gangway over theGar’sside. She stepped lightly down into the cockpit with a naïve expression of surprise at the yacht’s immaculate order. The sails lay precisely housed, the stays, freshly tarred, glistened in the sun, the brasswork and newly varnished mahogany shone, the mathematically coiled ropes rested on a deck as spotless as wood could be scraped.“Why,” she exclaimed, “it couldn’t be neater if you were two nice old ladies!”“I warn you,” Woolfolk replied, “Halvard will not regard that particularly as a compliment. He will assure you that the order of a proper yacht is beyond the most ambitious dream of a mere housekeeper.”She laughed as Halvard placed a chair for her. She was, Woolfolk thought, lighter in spirit on the ketch than she had been on shore; there was the faintest imaginable stain on her petal-like cheeks; her eyes, like olive leaves, were almost gay. She sat with her slender knees crossed, her fine arms held with hands clasped behind her head, and clad in a crisply ironed, crude white dress, into the band of which she had thrust a spray of orange blossoms.John Woolfolk was increasingly conscious of her peculiar charm. Millie Stope, he suddenly realized, was like the wild oranges in the neglected grove at her door. A man brought in contact with her magnetic being charged with appealing and mysterious emotions, in a setting of exotic night and black sea, would find other women, the ordinary concourse of society, insipid—like faintly sweetened water.She was entirely at home on the ketch, sitting against the immaculate rim of deck and the sea. He resented that familiarity as an unwarranted intrusion of the world he had left. Other people, women among them, had unavoidably crossed his deck, but they had been patently alien, momentary; but Millie, with her still delight at the yacht’s compact comfort, her intuitive comprehension of its various details—the lamps set in gimbals, the china racks and chart cases slung overhead—entered at once into the spirit of the craft that was John Woolfolk’s sole place of being.He was now disturbed by the ease with which she had established herself both in the yacht and in his imagination. He had thought, after so many years, to have destroyed all the bonds which ordinarily connect men with life; but now a mere curiosity had grown into a tangible interest, and the interest showed unmistakable signs of becoming sympathy.She smiled at him from her position by the wheel; and he instinctively responded with such an unaccustomed, ready warmth that he said abruptly, seeking refuge in occupation:“Why not reach out to sea? The conditions are perfect.”“Ah, please!” she cried. “Just to take up the anchor would thrill me for months.”A light west wind was blowing; and deliberate, exactly spaced swells, their tops laced with iridescent spray, were sweeping in from a sea like a glassy blue pavement. Woolfolk issued a short order, and the sailor moved forward with his customary smooth swiftness. The sails were shaken loose, the mainsail slowly spread its dazzling expanse to the sun, the jib and jigger were trimmed, and the anchor came up with a short rush.Millie rose with her arms outspread, her chin high and eyes closed.“Free!” she proclaimed with a slow, deep breath.The sails filled and the ketch forged ahead. John Woolfolk, at the wheel, glanced at the chart section beside him.“There’s four feet on the bar at low water,” he told Halvard. “The tide’s at half flood now.”TheGarincreased her speed, slipping easily out of the bay, gladly, it seemed to Woolfolk, turning toward the sea. The bow rose, and the ketch dipped forward over a spent wave. Millie Stope grasped the wheelbox. “Free!” she said again with shining eyes.The yacht rose more sharply, hung on a wave’s crest and slid lightly downward. Woolfolk, with a sinewy, dark hand directing their course, was intent upon the swelling sails. Once he stopped, tightening a halyard, and the sailor said:“The main peak won’t flatten, sir.”The swells grew larger. TheGarclimbed their smooth heights and coasted like a feather beyond. Directly before the yacht they were unbroken, but on either side they foamed into a silver quickly reabsorbed in the deeper water within the bar.Woolfolk turned from his scrutiny of the ketch to his companion, and was surprised to see her, with all the joy evaporated from her countenance, clinging rigidly to the rail. He said to himself, “Seasick.” Then he realized that it was not a physical illness that possessed her, but a profound, increasing terror. She endeavored to smile back at his questioning gaze, and said in a small, uncertain voice:“It’s so—so big!”For a moment he saw in her a clear resemblance to the shrinking figure of Lichfield Stope. It was as though suddenly she had lost her fine profile and become indeterminate, shadowy. The grey web of the old deflection in Virginia extended over her out of the past—of the past that, Woolfolk thought, would not die.TheGarrose higher still, dropped into the deep, watery valley, and the woman’s face was drawn and wet, the back of her straining hand was dead white. Without further delay John Woolfolk put the wheel sharply over and told his man, “We’re going about.” Halvard busied himself with the shaking sails.“Really—I’d rather you didn’t,” Millie gasped. “I must learn ... no longer a child.”But Woolfolk held the ketch on her return course; his companion’s panic was growing beyond her control. They passed once more between the broken waves and entered the still bay with its border of flowering earth. There, when the yacht had been anchored, Millie sat gazing silently at the open sea whose bigness had so unexpectedly distressed her. Her face was pinched, her mouth set in a straight, hard line. That, somehow, suggested to Woolfolk the enigmatic governess; it was in contradiction to the rest.“How strange,” she said at last in an insuperably weary voice, “to be forced back to this place that I loathe, by myself, by my own cowardice. It’s exactly as if my spirit were chained—then the body could never be free. What is it,” she demanded of John Woolfolk, “that lives in our own hearts and betrays our utmost convictions and efforts, and destroys us against all knowledge and desire?”“It may be called heredity,” he replied; “that is its simplest phase. The others extend into the realms of the fantastic.”“It’s unjust,” she cried bitterly, “to be condemned to die in a pit with all one’s instinct in the sky!”The old plea of injustice quivered for a moment over the water and then died away. John Woolfolk had made the same passionate protest, he had cried it with clenched hands at the withdrawn stars, and the profound inattention of Nature had appalled his agony. A thrill of pity moved him for the suffering woman beside him. Her mouth was still unrelaxed. There was in her the material for a struggle against the invidious past.In her slender frame the rebellion took on an accent of the heroic. Woolfolk recalled how utterly he had gone down before mischance. But his case had been extreme, he had suffered an unendurable wrong at the hand of Fate. Halvard diverted his thoughts by placing before them a tray of sugared pineapple and symmetrical cakes. Millie, too, lost her tension; she showed a feminine pleasure at the yacht’s fine napkins, approved the polish of the glass.“It’s all quite wonderful,” she said.“I have nothing else to care for,” Woolfolk told her.“No place nor people on land?”“None.”“And you are satisfied?”“Absolutely,” he replied with an unnecessary emphasis. He was, he told himself aggressively; he wanted nothing more from living and had nothing to give. Yet his pity for Millie Stope mounted obscurely, bringing with it thoughts, dim obligations and desires, to which he had declared himself dead.“I wonder if you are to be envied?” she queried.A sudden astounding willingness to speak of himself, even of the past, swept over him.“Hardly,” he replied. “All the things that men value were killed for me in an instant, in the flutter of a white skirt.”“Can you talk about it?”“There’s almost nothing to tell; it was so unrelated, so senseless and blind. It can’t be dressed into a story, it has no moral—no meaning. Well—it was twelve years ago. I had just been married, and we had gone to a property in the country. After two days I had to go into town, and when I came back Ellen met me in a breaking cart. It was a flag station, buried in maples, with a white road winding back to where we were staying.“Ellen had trouble in holding the horse when the train left, and the beast shied going from the station. It was Monday, clothes hung from a line in a side yard and a skirt fluttered in a little breeze. The horse reared, the strapped back of the seat broke, and Ellen was thrown—on her head. It killed her.”He fell silent. Millie breathed sharply, and a ripple struck with a faint slap on the yacht’s side. Then: “One can’t allow that,” he continued in a lower voice, as if arguing with himself; “arbitrary, wanton; impossible to accept such conditions—“She was young,” he once more took up the narrative; “a girl in a tennis skirt with a gay scarf about her waist—quite dead in a second. The clothes still fluttered on the line. You see,” he ended, “nothing instructive, tragic—only a crude dissonance.”“Then you left everything?”He failed to answer, and she gazed with a new understanding and interest over theGar. Her attention was attracted to the beach, and, following her gaze, John Woolfolk saw the bulky figure of Nicholas gazing at them from under his palm. A palpable change, a swift shadow, enveloped Millie Stope.“I must go back,” she said uneasily; “there will be dinner, and my father has been alone all morning.”But Woolfolk was certain that, however convincing the reasons she put forward, it was none of these that was taking her so hurriedly ashore. The dread that for the past few hours had almost vanished from her tones, her gaze, had returned multiplied. It was, he realized, the objective fear; her entire being was shrinking as if in anticipation of an imminent calamity, a physical blow.Woolfolk himself put her on the beach; and, with the tender canted on the sand, steadied her spring. As her hand rested on his arm it gripped him with a sharp force; a response pulsed through his body; and an involuntary color rose in her pale, fine cheeks.Nicholas, stolidly set with his shoes half buried in the sand, surveyed them without a shade of feeling on his thick countenance. But Woolfolk saw that the other’s fingers were crawling toward his pocket. He realized that the man’s dully smiling mask concealed sultry, ungoverned emotions, blind springs of hate.

ONthe morning following the breaking of his water cask John Woolfolk saw the slender figure of Millie on the beach. She waved and called, her voice coming thin and clear across the water:

“Are visitors—encouraged?”

He sent Halvard in with the tender, and as they approached, dropped a gangway over theGar’sside. She stepped lightly down into the cockpit with a naïve expression of surprise at the yacht’s immaculate order. The sails lay precisely housed, the stays, freshly tarred, glistened in the sun, the brasswork and newly varnished mahogany shone, the mathematically coiled ropes rested on a deck as spotless as wood could be scraped.

“Why,” she exclaimed, “it couldn’t be neater if you were two nice old ladies!”

“I warn you,” Woolfolk replied, “Halvard will not regard that particularly as a compliment. He will assure you that the order of a proper yacht is beyond the most ambitious dream of a mere housekeeper.”

She laughed as Halvard placed a chair for her. She was, Woolfolk thought, lighter in spirit on the ketch than she had been on shore; there was the faintest imaginable stain on her petal-like cheeks; her eyes, like olive leaves, were almost gay. She sat with her slender knees crossed, her fine arms held with hands clasped behind her head, and clad in a crisply ironed, crude white dress, into the band of which she had thrust a spray of orange blossoms.

John Woolfolk was increasingly conscious of her peculiar charm. Millie Stope, he suddenly realized, was like the wild oranges in the neglected grove at her door. A man brought in contact with her magnetic being charged with appealing and mysterious emotions, in a setting of exotic night and black sea, would find other women, the ordinary concourse of society, insipid—like faintly sweetened water.

She was entirely at home on the ketch, sitting against the immaculate rim of deck and the sea. He resented that familiarity as an unwarranted intrusion of the world he had left. Other people, women among them, had unavoidably crossed his deck, but they had been patently alien, momentary; but Millie, with her still delight at the yacht’s compact comfort, her intuitive comprehension of its various details—the lamps set in gimbals, the china racks and chart cases slung overhead—entered at once into the spirit of the craft that was John Woolfolk’s sole place of being.

He was now disturbed by the ease with which she had established herself both in the yacht and in his imagination. He had thought, after so many years, to have destroyed all the bonds which ordinarily connect men with life; but now a mere curiosity had grown into a tangible interest, and the interest showed unmistakable signs of becoming sympathy.

She smiled at him from her position by the wheel; and he instinctively responded with such an unaccustomed, ready warmth that he said abruptly, seeking refuge in occupation:

“Why not reach out to sea? The conditions are perfect.”

“Ah, please!” she cried. “Just to take up the anchor would thrill me for months.”

A light west wind was blowing; and deliberate, exactly spaced swells, their tops laced with iridescent spray, were sweeping in from a sea like a glassy blue pavement. Woolfolk issued a short order, and the sailor moved forward with his customary smooth swiftness. The sails were shaken loose, the mainsail slowly spread its dazzling expanse to the sun, the jib and jigger were trimmed, and the anchor came up with a short rush.

Millie rose with her arms outspread, her chin high and eyes closed.

“Free!” she proclaimed with a slow, deep breath.

The sails filled and the ketch forged ahead. John Woolfolk, at the wheel, glanced at the chart section beside him.

“There’s four feet on the bar at low water,” he told Halvard. “The tide’s at half flood now.”

TheGarincreased her speed, slipping easily out of the bay, gladly, it seemed to Woolfolk, turning toward the sea. The bow rose, and the ketch dipped forward over a spent wave. Millie Stope grasped the wheelbox. “Free!” she said again with shining eyes.

The yacht rose more sharply, hung on a wave’s crest and slid lightly downward. Woolfolk, with a sinewy, dark hand directing their course, was intent upon the swelling sails. Once he stopped, tightening a halyard, and the sailor said:

“The main peak won’t flatten, sir.”

The swells grew larger. TheGarclimbed their smooth heights and coasted like a feather beyond. Directly before the yacht they were unbroken, but on either side they foamed into a silver quickly reabsorbed in the deeper water within the bar.

Woolfolk turned from his scrutiny of the ketch to his companion, and was surprised to see her, with all the joy evaporated from her countenance, clinging rigidly to the rail. He said to himself, “Seasick.” Then he realized that it was not a physical illness that possessed her, but a profound, increasing terror. She endeavored to smile back at his questioning gaze, and said in a small, uncertain voice:

“It’s so—so big!”

For a moment he saw in her a clear resemblance to the shrinking figure of Lichfield Stope. It was as though suddenly she had lost her fine profile and become indeterminate, shadowy. The grey web of the old deflection in Virginia extended over her out of the past—of the past that, Woolfolk thought, would not die.

TheGarrose higher still, dropped into the deep, watery valley, and the woman’s face was drawn and wet, the back of her straining hand was dead white. Without further delay John Woolfolk put the wheel sharply over and told his man, “We’re going about.” Halvard busied himself with the shaking sails.

“Really—I’d rather you didn’t,” Millie gasped. “I must learn ... no longer a child.”

But Woolfolk held the ketch on her return course; his companion’s panic was growing beyond her control. They passed once more between the broken waves and entered the still bay with its border of flowering earth. There, when the yacht had been anchored, Millie sat gazing silently at the open sea whose bigness had so unexpectedly distressed her. Her face was pinched, her mouth set in a straight, hard line. That, somehow, suggested to Woolfolk the enigmatic governess; it was in contradiction to the rest.

“How strange,” she said at last in an insuperably weary voice, “to be forced back to this place that I loathe, by myself, by my own cowardice. It’s exactly as if my spirit were chained—then the body could never be free. What is it,” she demanded of John Woolfolk, “that lives in our own hearts and betrays our utmost convictions and efforts, and destroys us against all knowledge and desire?”

“It may be called heredity,” he replied; “that is its simplest phase. The others extend into the realms of the fantastic.”

“It’s unjust,” she cried bitterly, “to be condemned to die in a pit with all one’s instinct in the sky!”

The old plea of injustice quivered for a moment over the water and then died away. John Woolfolk had made the same passionate protest, he had cried it with clenched hands at the withdrawn stars, and the profound inattention of Nature had appalled his agony. A thrill of pity moved him for the suffering woman beside him. Her mouth was still unrelaxed. There was in her the material for a struggle against the invidious past.

In her slender frame the rebellion took on an accent of the heroic. Woolfolk recalled how utterly he had gone down before mischance. But his case had been extreme, he had suffered an unendurable wrong at the hand of Fate. Halvard diverted his thoughts by placing before them a tray of sugared pineapple and symmetrical cakes. Millie, too, lost her tension; she showed a feminine pleasure at the yacht’s fine napkins, approved the polish of the glass.

“It’s all quite wonderful,” she said.

“I have nothing else to care for,” Woolfolk told her.

“No place nor people on land?”

“None.”

“And you are satisfied?”

“Absolutely,” he replied with an unnecessary emphasis. He was, he told himself aggressively; he wanted nothing more from living and had nothing to give. Yet his pity for Millie Stope mounted obscurely, bringing with it thoughts, dim obligations and desires, to which he had declared himself dead.

“I wonder if you are to be envied?” she queried.

A sudden astounding willingness to speak of himself, even of the past, swept over him.

“Hardly,” he replied. “All the things that men value were killed for me in an instant, in the flutter of a white skirt.”

“Can you talk about it?”

“There’s almost nothing to tell; it was so unrelated, so senseless and blind. It can’t be dressed into a story, it has no moral—no meaning. Well—it was twelve years ago. I had just been married, and we had gone to a property in the country. After two days I had to go into town, and when I came back Ellen met me in a breaking cart. It was a flag station, buried in maples, with a white road winding back to where we were staying.

“Ellen had trouble in holding the horse when the train left, and the beast shied going from the station. It was Monday, clothes hung from a line in a side yard and a skirt fluttered in a little breeze. The horse reared, the strapped back of the seat broke, and Ellen was thrown—on her head. It killed her.”

He fell silent. Millie breathed sharply, and a ripple struck with a faint slap on the yacht’s side. Then: “One can’t allow that,” he continued in a lower voice, as if arguing with himself; “arbitrary, wanton; impossible to accept such conditions—

“She was young,” he once more took up the narrative; “a girl in a tennis skirt with a gay scarf about her waist—quite dead in a second. The clothes still fluttered on the line. You see,” he ended, “nothing instructive, tragic—only a crude dissonance.”

“Then you left everything?”

He failed to answer, and she gazed with a new understanding and interest over theGar. Her attention was attracted to the beach, and, following her gaze, John Woolfolk saw the bulky figure of Nicholas gazing at them from under his palm. A palpable change, a swift shadow, enveloped Millie Stope.

“I must go back,” she said uneasily; “there will be dinner, and my father has been alone all morning.”

But Woolfolk was certain that, however convincing the reasons she put forward, it was none of these that was taking her so hurriedly ashore. The dread that for the past few hours had almost vanished from her tones, her gaze, had returned multiplied. It was, he realized, the objective fear; her entire being was shrinking as if in anticipation of an imminent calamity, a physical blow.

Woolfolk himself put her on the beach; and, with the tender canted on the sand, steadied her spring. As her hand rested on his arm it gripped him with a sharp force; a response pulsed through his body; and an involuntary color rose in her pale, fine cheeks.

Nicholas, stolidly set with his shoes half buried in the sand, surveyed them without a shade of feeling on his thick countenance. But Woolfolk saw that the other’s fingers were crawling toward his pocket. He realized that the man’s dully smiling mask concealed sultry, ungoverned emotions, blind springs of hate.

AGAINon the ketch the inevitable reaction overtook him. He had spoken of Ellen’s death to no one until now, through all the years when he had been a wanderer on the edge of his world, and he bitterly regretted his reference to it. In speaking he had betrayed his resolution of solitude. Life, against all his instinct, his wishes, had reached out and caught him, however lightly, in its tentacles.The least surrender, he realized, the slightest opening of his interest, would bind him with a multitude of attachments; the octopus that he dreaded, uncoiling arm after arm, would soon hold him again, a helpless victim for the fury Chance.He had made a disastrous error in following his curiosity, the insistent scent of the wild oranges, to the house where Millie had advanced on the dim portico. His return there had been the inevitable result of the first mistake, and the rest had followed with a fatal ease. Whatever had been the deficiences of the past twelve years he had been free from new complications, fresh treacheries. Now, with hardly a struggle, he was falling back into the old trap.The wind died away absolutely, and a haze gathered delicately over the sea, thickening through the afternoon, and turned rosy by the declining sun. The shore had faded from sight.A sudden energy leaped through John Woolfolk and rang out in an abrupt summons to Halvard. “Get up anchor,” he commanded.Poul Halvard, at the mainstay, remarked tentatively: “There’s not a capful of wind.”The wide calm, Woolfolk thought, was but a part of a general conspiracy against his liberty, his memories. “Get the anchor up,” he repeated harshly. “We’ll go under the engine.” The sudden jarring of theGar’sengine sounded muffled in a shut space like the flushed heart of a shell. The yacht moved forward, with a wake like folded gauze, into a shimmer of formless and pure color.John Woolfolk sat at the wheel, motionless except for an occasional scant shifting of his hands. He was sailing by compass; the patent log, trailing behind on its long cord, maintained a constant, jerking register on its dial. He had resolutely banished all thought save that of navigation. Halvard was occupied forward, clearing the deck of the accumulations of the anchorage. When he came aft Woolfolk said shortly: “No mess.”The haze deepened and night fell, and the sailor lighted and placed the port and starboard lights. The binnacle lamp threw up a dim, orange radiance on Woolfolk’s somber countenance. He continued for three and four and then five hours at the wheel, while the smooth clamor of the engine, a slight quiver of the hull, alone marked their progress through an invisible element.Once more he had left life behind. This had more the aspect of a flight than at any time previous. It was, obscurely, an unpleasant thought, and he endeavored—unsuccessfully—to put it from him. He was but pursuing the course he had laid out, following his necessary, inflexible determination.His mind for a moment turned independently back to Millie with her double burden of fear. He had left her without a word, isolated with Nicholas, concealing with a blank smile his enigmatic being, and with her impotent parent.Well, he was not responsible for her, he had paid for the privilege of immunity; he had but listened to her story, volunteering nothing. John Woolfolk wished, however, that he had said some final, useful word to her before going. He was certain that, looking for the ketch and unexpectedly finding the bay empty, she would suffer a pang, if only of loneliness. In the short while that he had been there she had come to depend on him for companionship, for relief from the insuperable monotony of her surroundings; for, perhaps, still more. He wondered what that more might contain. He thought of Millie at the present moment, probably lying awake, steeped in dread. His flight now assumed the aspect of an act of cowardice, of desertion. He rehearsed wearily the extenuations of his position, but without any palpable relief.An even more disturbing possibility lodged in his thoughts—he was not certain that he did not wish to be actually back with Millie again. He felt the quick pressure of her fingers on his arm as she jumped from the tender; her magnetic personality hung about him like an aroma. Cloaked in mystery, pale and irresistible, she appealed to him from the edge of the wild oranges.This, he told himself again, was but the manner in which a ruthless Nature set her lures; it was the deceptive vestment of romance. He held the ketch relentlessly on her course, with—now—all his thoughts, his inclinations, returning to Millie Stope. In a final, desperate rally of his scattering resolution he told himself that he was unfaithful to the tragic memory of Ellen. This last stay broke abruptly, and left him defenseless against the tyranny of his mounting desires. Strangely he felt the sudden pressure of a stirring wind upon his face; and, almost with an oath, he put the wheel sharply over and theGarswung about.Poul Halvard had been below, by inference asleep; but when the yacht changed her course he immediately appeared on deck. He moved aft, but Woolfolk made no explanation, the sailor put no questions. The wind freshened, grew sustained. Woolfolk said:“Make sail.”Soon after, the mainsail rose, a ghostly white expanse on the night. John Woolfolk trimmed the jigger, shut off the engine; and, moving through a sudden, vast hush, they retraced their course. The bay was ablaze with sunlight, the morning well advanced, when the ketch floated back to her anchorage under the oleanders.

The least surrender, he realized, the slightest opening of his interest, would bind him with a multitude of attachments; the octopus that he dreaded, uncoiling arm after arm, would soon hold him again, a helpless victim for the fury Chance.

He had made a disastrous error in following his curiosity, the insistent scent of the wild oranges, to the house where Millie had advanced on the dim portico. His return there had been the inevitable result of the first mistake, and the rest had followed with a fatal ease. Whatever had been the deficiences of the past twelve years he had been free from new complications, fresh treacheries. Now, with hardly a struggle, he was falling back into the old trap.

The wind died away absolutely, and a haze gathered delicately over the sea, thickening through the afternoon, and turned rosy by the declining sun. The shore had faded from sight.

A sudden energy leaped through John Woolfolk and rang out in an abrupt summons to Halvard. “Get up anchor,” he commanded.

Poul Halvard, at the mainstay, remarked tentatively: “There’s not a capful of wind.”

The wide calm, Woolfolk thought, was but a part of a general conspiracy against his liberty, his memories. “Get the anchor up,” he repeated harshly. “We’ll go under the engine.” The sudden jarring of theGar’sengine sounded muffled in a shut space like the flushed heart of a shell. The yacht moved forward, with a wake like folded gauze, into a shimmer of formless and pure color.

John Woolfolk sat at the wheel, motionless except for an occasional scant shifting of his hands. He was sailing by compass; the patent log, trailing behind on its long cord, maintained a constant, jerking register on its dial. He had resolutely banished all thought save that of navigation. Halvard was occupied forward, clearing the deck of the accumulations of the anchorage. When he came aft Woolfolk said shortly: “No mess.”

The haze deepened and night fell, and the sailor lighted and placed the port and starboard lights. The binnacle lamp threw up a dim, orange radiance on Woolfolk’s somber countenance. He continued for three and four and then five hours at the wheel, while the smooth clamor of the engine, a slight quiver of the hull, alone marked their progress through an invisible element.

Once more he had left life behind. This had more the aspect of a flight than at any time previous. It was, obscurely, an unpleasant thought, and he endeavored—unsuccessfully—to put it from him. He was but pursuing the course he had laid out, following his necessary, inflexible determination.

His mind for a moment turned independently back to Millie with her double burden of fear. He had left her without a word, isolated with Nicholas, concealing with a blank smile his enigmatic being, and with her impotent parent.

Well, he was not responsible for her, he had paid for the privilege of immunity; he had but listened to her story, volunteering nothing. John Woolfolk wished, however, that he had said some final, useful word to her before going. He was certain that, looking for the ketch and unexpectedly finding the bay empty, she would suffer a pang, if only of loneliness. In the short while that he had been there she had come to depend on him for companionship, for relief from the insuperable monotony of her surroundings; for, perhaps, still more. He wondered what that more might contain. He thought of Millie at the present moment, probably lying awake, steeped in dread. His flight now assumed the aspect of an act of cowardice, of desertion. He rehearsed wearily the extenuations of his position, but without any palpable relief.

An even more disturbing possibility lodged in his thoughts—he was not certain that he did not wish to be actually back with Millie again. He felt the quick pressure of her fingers on his arm as she jumped from the tender; her magnetic personality hung about him like an aroma. Cloaked in mystery, pale and irresistible, she appealed to him from the edge of the wild oranges.

This, he told himself again, was but the manner in which a ruthless Nature set her lures; it was the deceptive vestment of romance. He held the ketch relentlessly on her course, with—now—all his thoughts, his inclinations, returning to Millie Stope. In a final, desperate rally of his scattering resolution he told himself that he was unfaithful to the tragic memory of Ellen. This last stay broke abruptly, and left him defenseless against the tyranny of his mounting desires. Strangely he felt the sudden pressure of a stirring wind upon his face; and, almost with an oath, he put the wheel sharply over and theGarswung about.

Poul Halvard had been below, by inference asleep; but when the yacht changed her course he immediately appeared on deck. He moved aft, but Woolfolk made no explanation, the sailor put no questions. The wind freshened, grew sustained. Woolfolk said:

“Make sail.”

Soon after, the mainsail rose, a ghostly white expanse on the night. John Woolfolk trimmed the jigger, shut off the engine; and, moving through a sudden, vast hush, they retraced their course. The bay was ablaze with sunlight, the morning well advanced, when the ketch floated back to her anchorage under the oleanders.

WHETHERhe returned or fled, Woolfolk thought, he was enveloped in an atmosphere of defeat. He relinquished the wheel, but remained seated, drooping at his post. The indefatigable Halvard proceeded with the efficient discharge of his narrow, exacting duties. After a short space John Woolfolk descended to the cabin, where, on an unmade berth, he fell immediately asleep.He woke to a dim interior and twilight gathering outside. He shaved—without conscious purpose—with meticulous care, and put on the blue flannel coat. Later he rowed himself ashore and proceeded directly through the orange grove to the house beyond.Millie Stope was seated on the portico, and laid a restraining hand on her father’s arm as he rose, attempting to retreat at Woolfolk’s approach. The latter, with a commonplace greeting, resumed his place.Millie’s face was dim and potent in the gloom, and Lichfield Stope more than ever resembled an uneasy ghost. He muttered an indistinct response to a period directed at him by Woolfolk and turned with a low, urgent appeal to his daughter. The latter, with a hopeless gesture, relinquished his arm, and the other vanished.“You were sailing this morning,” Millie commented listlessly.“I had gone,” he said without explanation. Then he added: “But I came back.”A silence threatened them which he resolutely broke: “Do you remember, when you told me about your father, that you wanted really to talk about yourself? Will you do that now?”“Tonight I haven’t the courage.”“I am not idly curious,” he persisted.“Just what are you?”“I don’t know,” he admitted frankly. “At the present moment I’m lost, fogged. But, meanwhile, I’d like to give you any assistance in my power. You seem, in a mysterious way, needful of help.”She turned her head sharply in the direction of the open hall and said in a high, clear voice, that yet rang strangely false: “I am quite well cared for by my father and Nicholas.” She moved closer to him, dragging her chair across the uneven porch, in the rasp of which she added, quick and low:“Don’t—please.”A mounting exasperation seized him at the secrecy that veiled her, hid her from him, and he answered stiffly: “I am merely intrusive.”King Vidor’s “Wild Oranges.”A Goldwyn Picture.A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.She was seated above him, and she leaned forward and swiftly pressed his fingers, loosely clasped about a knee. Her hand was as cold as salt. His irritation vanished before a welling pity. He got now a sharp, recognized happiness from her nearness; his feeling for her increased with the accumulating seconds. After the surrender, the admission, of his return he had grown elemental, sensitized to emotions rather than to processes of intellect. His ardor had the poignancy of the period beyond youth. It had a trace of the consciousness of the fatal waning of life which gave it a depth denied to younger passions. He wished to take Millie Stope at once from all memory of the troublous past, to have her alone in a totally different and thrilling existence.It was a personal and blind desire, born in the unaccustomed tumult of his newly released feelings.They sat for a long while, silent or speaking in trivialities, when he proposed a walk to the sea; but she declined in that curiously loud and false tone. It seemed to Woolfolk that, for the moment, she had addressed someone not immediately present; and involuntarily he looked around. The light of the hidden lamp in the hall fell in a pale, unbroken rectangle on the irregular porch. There was not the shifting of a pound’s weight audible in the stillness.Millie breathed unevenly; at times he saw she shivered uncontrollably. At this his feeling mounted beyond all restraint. He said, taking her cold hand: “I didn’t tell you why I went last night—it was because I was afraid to stay where you were; I was afraid of the change you were bringing about in my life. That’s all over now, I—”“Isn’t it quite late?” she interrupted him uncomfortably. She rose and her agitation visibly increased.He was about to force her to hear all that he must say, but he stopped at the mute wretchedness of her pallid face. He stood gazing up at her from the rough sod. She clenched her hands, her breast heaved sharply, and she spoke in a level, strained voice:“It would have been better if you had gone—without coming back. My father is unhappy with anyone about except myself—and Nicholas. You see—he will not stay on the porch nor walk about his grounds. I am not in need of assistance, as you seem to think. And—thank you. Good night.”He stood without moving, his head thrown back, regarding her with a searching frown. He listened again, unconsciously, and thought he heard the low creaking of a board from within. It could be nothing but the uneasy peregrination of Lichfield Stope. The sound was repeated, grew louder, and the sagging bulk of Nicholas appeared in the doorway.The latter stood for a moment, a dark, magnified shape; and then, moving across the portico to the farthest window, closed the shutters. The hinges gave out a rasping grind, as if they had not been turned for months, and there was a faint rattle of falling particles of rusted iron. The man forced shut a second set of shutters with a sudden violence and went slowly back into the house. Millie Stope said once more:“Good night.”It was evident to Woolfolk that he could gain nothing more at present; and stifling an angry protest, an impatient troop of questions, he turned and strode back to the tender. However, he hadn’t the slightest intention of following Millie’s indirectly expressed wish for him to leave. He had the odd conviction that at heart she did not want him to go; the evening, he elaborated this feeling, had been all a strange piece of acting. Tomorrow he would tear apart the veil that hid her from him; he would ignore her every protest and force the truth from her.He lifted the tender’s anchor from the sand and pulled sharply across the water to theGar. A reddish, misshapen moon hung in the east, and when he had mounted to his deck it was suddenly obscured by a high, racing scud of cloud; the air had a damper, thicker feel. He instinctively moved to the barometer, which he found depressed. The wind, that had continued steadily since the night before, increased, and there was a corresponding stir among the branches ashore, a slapping of the yacht’s cordage against the spars. He turned forward and half absently noted the increasing strain on the hawser disappearing into the dark tide. The anchor was firmly bedded. The pervasive far murmur of the waves on the outer bars grew louder.The yacht swung lightly over the choppy water, and a strong affection for the ketch that had been his home, his occupation, his solace through the past dreary years expanded his heart. He knew theGar’severy capability and mood, and they were all good. She was an exceptional boat. His feeling was acute, for he knew that the yacht had been superseded. It was already an element of the past, of that past in which Ellen lay dead in a tennis skirt, with a bright scarf about her young waist.He placed his hand on the mainmast, in the manner in which another might drop a palm on the shoulder of a departing faithful companion, and the wind in the rigging vibrated through the wood like a sentient and affectionate response. Then he went resolutely down into the cabin, facing the future.John Woolfolk woke in the night, listened for a moment to the straining hull and wind shrilling aloft, and then rose and went forward again to examine the mooring. A second hawser now reached into the darkness. Halvard had been on deck and put out another anchor. The wind beat salt and stinging from the sea, utterly dissipating the languorous breath of the land, the odors of the exotic, flowering trees.

He woke to a dim interior and twilight gathering outside. He shaved—without conscious purpose—with meticulous care, and put on the blue flannel coat. Later he rowed himself ashore and proceeded directly through the orange grove to the house beyond.

Millie Stope was seated on the portico, and laid a restraining hand on her father’s arm as he rose, attempting to retreat at Woolfolk’s approach. The latter, with a commonplace greeting, resumed his place.

Millie’s face was dim and potent in the gloom, and Lichfield Stope more than ever resembled an uneasy ghost. He muttered an indistinct response to a period directed at him by Woolfolk and turned with a low, urgent appeal to his daughter. The latter, with a hopeless gesture, relinquished his arm, and the other vanished.

“You were sailing this morning,” Millie commented listlessly.

“I had gone,” he said without explanation. Then he added: “But I came back.”

A silence threatened them which he resolutely broke: “Do you remember, when you told me about your father, that you wanted really to talk about yourself? Will you do that now?”

“Tonight I haven’t the courage.”

“I am not idly curious,” he persisted.

“Just what are you?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted frankly. “At the present moment I’m lost, fogged. But, meanwhile, I’d like to give you any assistance in my power. You seem, in a mysterious way, needful of help.”

She turned her head sharply in the direction of the open hall and said in a high, clear voice, that yet rang strangely false: “I am quite well cared for by my father and Nicholas.” She moved closer to him, dragging her chair across the uneven porch, in the rasp of which she added, quick and low:

“Don’t—please.”

A mounting exasperation seized him at the secrecy that veiled her, hid her from him, and he answered stiffly: “I am merely intrusive.”

King Vidor’s “Wild Oranges.”A Goldwyn Picture.A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.

She was seated above him, and she leaned forward and swiftly pressed his fingers, loosely clasped about a knee. Her hand was as cold as salt. His irritation vanished before a welling pity. He got now a sharp, recognized happiness from her nearness; his feeling for her increased with the accumulating seconds. After the surrender, the admission, of his return he had grown elemental, sensitized to emotions rather than to processes of intellect. His ardor had the poignancy of the period beyond youth. It had a trace of the consciousness of the fatal waning of life which gave it a depth denied to younger passions. He wished to take Millie Stope at once from all memory of the troublous past, to have her alone in a totally different and thrilling existence.

It was a personal and blind desire, born in the unaccustomed tumult of his newly released feelings.

They sat for a long while, silent or speaking in trivialities, when he proposed a walk to the sea; but she declined in that curiously loud and false tone. It seemed to Woolfolk that, for the moment, she had addressed someone not immediately present; and involuntarily he looked around. The light of the hidden lamp in the hall fell in a pale, unbroken rectangle on the irregular porch. There was not the shifting of a pound’s weight audible in the stillness.

Millie breathed unevenly; at times he saw she shivered uncontrollably. At this his feeling mounted beyond all restraint. He said, taking her cold hand: “I didn’t tell you why I went last night—it was because I was afraid to stay where you were; I was afraid of the change you were bringing about in my life. That’s all over now, I—”

“Isn’t it quite late?” she interrupted him uncomfortably. She rose and her agitation visibly increased.

He was about to force her to hear all that he must say, but he stopped at the mute wretchedness of her pallid face. He stood gazing up at her from the rough sod. She clenched her hands, her breast heaved sharply, and she spoke in a level, strained voice:

“It would have been better if you had gone—without coming back. My father is unhappy with anyone about except myself—and Nicholas. You see—he will not stay on the porch nor walk about his grounds. I am not in need of assistance, as you seem to think. And—thank you. Good night.”

He stood without moving, his head thrown back, regarding her with a searching frown. He listened again, unconsciously, and thought he heard the low creaking of a board from within. It could be nothing but the uneasy peregrination of Lichfield Stope. The sound was repeated, grew louder, and the sagging bulk of Nicholas appeared in the doorway.

The latter stood for a moment, a dark, magnified shape; and then, moving across the portico to the farthest window, closed the shutters. The hinges gave out a rasping grind, as if they had not been turned for months, and there was a faint rattle of falling particles of rusted iron. The man forced shut a second set of shutters with a sudden violence and went slowly back into the house. Millie Stope said once more:

“Good night.”

It was evident to Woolfolk that he could gain nothing more at present; and stifling an angry protest, an impatient troop of questions, he turned and strode back to the tender. However, he hadn’t the slightest intention of following Millie’s indirectly expressed wish for him to leave. He had the odd conviction that at heart she did not want him to go; the evening, he elaborated this feeling, had been all a strange piece of acting. Tomorrow he would tear apart the veil that hid her from him; he would ignore her every protest and force the truth from her.

He lifted the tender’s anchor from the sand and pulled sharply across the water to theGar. A reddish, misshapen moon hung in the east, and when he had mounted to his deck it was suddenly obscured by a high, racing scud of cloud; the air had a damper, thicker feel. He instinctively moved to the barometer, which he found depressed. The wind, that had continued steadily since the night before, increased, and there was a corresponding stir among the branches ashore, a slapping of the yacht’s cordage against the spars. He turned forward and half absently noted the increasing strain on the hawser disappearing into the dark tide. The anchor was firmly bedded. The pervasive far murmur of the waves on the outer bars grew louder.

The yacht swung lightly over the choppy water, and a strong affection for the ketch that had been his home, his occupation, his solace through the past dreary years expanded his heart. He knew theGar’severy capability and mood, and they were all good. She was an exceptional boat. His feeling was acute, for he knew that the yacht had been superseded. It was already an element of the past, of that past in which Ellen lay dead in a tennis skirt, with a bright scarf about her young waist.

He placed his hand on the mainmast, in the manner in which another might drop a palm on the shoulder of a departing faithful companion, and the wind in the rigging vibrated through the wood like a sentient and affectionate response. Then he went resolutely down into the cabin, facing the future.

John Woolfolk woke in the night, listened for a moment to the straining hull and wind shrilling aloft, and then rose and went forward again to examine the mooring. A second hawser now reached into the darkness. Halvard had been on deck and put out another anchor. The wind beat salt and stinging from the sea, utterly dissipating the languorous breath of the land, the odors of the exotic, flowering trees.

INthe morning a storm, driving out of the east, enveloped the coast in a frigid, lashing rain. The wind mounted steadily through the middle of the day with an increasing pitch accompanied by the basso of the racing seas. The bay grew opaque and seamed with white scars. After the meridian the rain ceased, but the wind maintained its volume, clamoring beneath a leaden pall.John Woolfolk, in dripping yellow oilskins, occasionally circled the deck of his ketch. Halvard had everything in a perfection of order. When the rain stopped, the sailor dropped into the tender and with a boat sponge bailed vigorously. Soon after, Woolfolk stepped out upon the beach. He was without any plan but the determination to put aside whatever obstacles held Millie from him. This rapidly crystallized into the resolve to take her with him before another day ended. His feeling for her, increasing to a passionate need, had destroyed the suspension, the deliberate calm of his life, as the storm had dissipated the sunny peace of the coast.He paused before the ruined façade, weighing her statement that it would have been better if he had not returned; and he wondered how that would affect her willingness, her ability, to see him today. He added the word “ability” instinctively and without explanation. And he decided that, in order to have any satisfactory speech with her, he must come upon her alone, away from the house. Then he could force her to hear to the finish what he wanted to say; in the open they might escape from the inexplicable inhibition that lay upon her expression of feeling, of desire. It would be necessary, at the same time, to avoid the notice of anyone who would warn her of his presence. This precluded his waiting at the familiar place on the rotting wharf.Three marble steps, awry and moldy, descended to the lawn from a French window in the side of the desolate mansion. They were screened by a tangle of rose-mallow, and there John Woolfolk seated himself—waiting.The wind shrilled about the corner of the house; there was a mournful clatter of shingles from above and the frenzied lashing of boughs. The noise was so great that he failed to hear the slightest indication of the approach of Nicholas until that individual passed directly before him. Nicholas stopped at the inner fringe of the beach and, from a point where he could not be seen from the ketch, stood gazing out at theGarpounding on her long anchor chains. The man remained for an oppressively extended period; Woolfolk could see his heavy, drooping shoulders and sunken head; and then the other moved to the left, crossing the rough open behind the oleanders. Woolfolk had a momentary glimpse of a huge nose and rapidly moving lips above an impotent chin.Nicholas, he realized, remained a complete enigma to him; beyond the conviction that the man was, in some minor way, leaden-witted, he knew nothing.A brief, watery ray of sunlight fell through a rift in the flying clouds and stained the tossing foliage pale gold; it was followed by a sudden drift of rain, then once more the naked wind. Woolfolk was fast determining to go up to the house and insist upon Millie’s hearing him, when unexpectedly she appeared in a somber, fluttering cloak, with her head uncovered and hair blown back from her pale brow. He waited until she had passed him, and then rose, softly calling her name.She stopped and turned, with a hand pressed to her heart. “I was afraid you’d gone out,” she told him. “The sea is like a pack of wolves.” Her voice was a low complexity of relief and fear.“Not alone,” he replied; “not without you.”“Madness,” she murmured, gathering her wavering cloak about her breast. She swayed, graceful as a reed in the wind, charged with potency. He made an involuntary gesture toward her with his arms; but in a sudden accession of fear she eluded him.“We must talk,” he told her. “There is a great deal that needs explaining, that—I think—I have a right to know, the right of your dependence on something to save you from yourself. There is another right, but only you can give that—”“Indeed,” she interrupted tensely, “you mustn’t stand here talking to me.”“I shall allow nothing to interrupt us,” he returned decidedly. “I have been long enough in the dark.”“But you don’t understand what you will, perhaps, bring on yourself—on me.”“I’m forced to ignore even that last.”She glanced hurriedly about. “Not here then, if you must.”She walked from him, toward the second ruined pile that fronted the bay. The steps to the gaping entrance had rotted away and they were forced to mount an insecure side piece. The interior, as Woolfolk had seen, was composed of one high room, while, above, a narrow, open second story hung like a ledge. On both sides were long counters with mounting sets of shelves behind them.“This was the store,” Millie told him. “It was a great estate.”A dim and moldering fragment of cotton stuff was hanging from a forgotten bolt; above, some tinware was eaten with rust; a scale had crushed in the floor and lay broken on the earth beneath; and a ledger, its leaves a single, sodden film of grey, was still open on a counter. A precarious stair mounted to the flooring above, and Millie Stope made her way upward, followed by Woolfolk.There, in the double gloom of the clouds and a small dormer window obscured by cobwebs, she sank on a broken box. The decayed walls shook perilously in the blasts of the wind. Below they could see the empty floor, and through the doorway the somber, gleaming greenery without.All the patient expostulation that John Woolfolk had prepared disappeared in a sudden tyranny of emotion, of hunger for the slender, weary figure before him. Seating himself at her side, he burst into a torrential expression of passionate desire that mounted with the tide of his eager words. He caught her hands, held them in a painful grip, and gazed down into her still, frightened face. He stopped abruptly, was silent for a tempestuous moment, and then baldly repeated the fact of his love.Millie Stope said:“I know so little about the love you mean.” Her voice trailed to silence; and in a lull of the storm they heard the thin patter of rats on the floor below, the stir of bats among the rafters.“It’s quickly learned,” he assured her. “Millie, do you feel any response at all in your heart—the slightest return of my longing?”“I don’t know,” she answered, turning toward him a troubled scrutiny. “Perhaps in another surrounding, with things different, I might care for you very much—”“I am going to take you into that other surrounding,” he announced.She ignored his interruption. “But we shall never have a chance to learn.” She silenced his attempted protest with a cool, flexible palm against his mouth. “Life,” she continued, “is so dreadfully in the dark. One is lost at the beginning. There are maps to take you safely to the Guianas, but none for souls. Perhaps religions are—Again I don’t know. I have found nothing secure—only a whirlpool into which I will not drag others.”“I will drag you out,” he asserted.She smiled at him, in a momentary tenderness, and continued: “When I was young I never doubted that I would conquer life. I pictured myself rising in triumph over circumstance, as a gull leaves the sea.... When I was young.... If I was afraid of the dark then I thought, of course, I would outgrow it; but it has grown deeper than my courage. The night is terrible now.” A shiver passed over her.“You are ill,” he insisted, “but you shall be cured.”“Perhaps, a year ago, something might have been done, with assistance; yes—with you. Then, whatever is, hadn’t materialized. Why did you delay?” she cried in a sudden suffering.“You’ll go with me tonight,” he declared stoutly.“In this?” She indicated the wind beating with the blows of a great fist against the swaying sides of the demolished store. “Have you seen the sea? Do you remember what happened on the day I went with you when it was so beautiful and still?”John Woolfolk realized, wakened to a renewed mental clearness by the threatening of all that he desired, that—as Millie had intimated—life was too complicated to be solved by a simple longing; love was not the all-powerful magician of conventional acceptance; there were other, no less profound, depths.He resolutely abandoned his mere inchoate wanting, and considered the elements of the position that were known to him. There was, in the first place, that old, lamentable dereliction of Lichfield Stope’s, and its aftermath in his daughter. Millie had just recalled to Woolfolk the duration, the activity, of its poison. Here there was no possibility of escape by mere removal; the stain was within; and it must be thoroughly cleansed before she could cope successfully, happily, with life. In this, he was forced to acknowledge, he could help her but little; it was an affair of spirit; and spiritual values—though they might be supported from without—had their growth and decrease strictly in the individual they animated.Still, he argued, a normal existence, a sense of security, would accomplish a great deal; and that in turn hung upon the elimination of the second, unknown element—the reason for her backward glances, her sudden, loud banalities, yesterday’s mechanical repudiation of his offered assistance and the implied wish for him to go. He said gravely:“I have been impatient, but you came so sharply into my empty existence that I was upset. If you are ill you can cure yourself. Never forget your mother’s ‘brave heart.’ But there is something objective, immediate, threatening you. Tell me what it is, Millie, and together we will overcome and put it away from you for ever.”She gazed panic-stricken into the empty gloom below. “No! no!” she exclaimed, rising. “You don’t know. I won’t drag you down. You must go away at once, tonight, even in the storm.”“What is it?” he demanded.She stood rigidly erect with her eyes shut and hands clasped at her sides. Then she slid down upon the box, lifting to him a white mask of fright.“It’s Nicholas,” she said, hardly above her breath.A sudden relief swept over John Woolfolk. In his mind he dismissed as negligible the heavy man fumbling beneath his soiled apron. He wondered how the other could have got such a grip on Millie Stope’s imagination.The mystery that had enveloped her was fast disappearing, leaving them without an obstacle to the happiness he proposed. Woolfolk said curtly:“Has Nicholas been annoying you?”She shivered, with clasped straining hands.“He says he’s crazy about me,” she told him in a shuddering voice that contracted his heart. “He says that I must—must marry him, or—” Her period trailed abruptly out to silence.Woolfolk grew animated with determination, an immediate purpose.“Where would Nicholas be at this hour?” he asked.She rose hastily, clinging to his arm. “You mustn’t,” she exclaimed, yet not loudly. “You don’t know! He is watching—something frightful would happen.”“Nothing ‘frightful,’” he returned tolerantly, preparing to descend. “Only unfortunate for Nicholas.”“You mustn’t,” she repeated desperately, her sheer weight hanging from her hands clasped about his neck. “Nicholas is not—not human. There’s something funny about him. I don’t mean funny, I—”He unclasped her fingers and quietly forced her back to the seat on the box. Then he took a place at her side.“Now,” he asked reasonably, “what is this about Nicholas?”She glanced down into the desolate cavern of the store; the ghostly remnant of cotton goods fluttered in a draft like a torn and grimy cobweb; the lower floor was palpably bare.“He came in April,” she commenced in a voice without any life. “The woman we had had for years was dead; and when Nicholas asked for work we were glad to take him. He wanted the smallest possible wages and was willing to do everything; he even cooked quite nicely. At first he was jumpy—he had asked if many strangers went by; but then when no one appeared he got easier.... He got easier and began to do extra things for me. I thanked him—until I understood. Then I asked father to send him away, but he was afraid; and, before I could get up my courage to do it, Nicholas spoke—“He said he was crazy about me, and would I please try and be good to him. He had always wanted to marry, he went on, and live right, but things had gone against him. I told him that he was impertinent and that he would have to go at once; but he cried and begged me not to say that, not to get him ‘started.’”That, John Woolfolk recalled, was precisely what the man had said to him.“I went back to father and told him why he must send Nicholas off, but father nearly suffocated. He turned almost black. Then I got frightened and locked myself in my room, while Nicholas sat out on the stair and sobbed all night. It was ghastly! In the morning I had to go down, and he went about his duties as usual.“That evening he spoke again, on the porch, twisting his hands exactly as if he were making bread. He repeated that he wanted me to be nice to him. He said something wrong would happen if I pushed him to it.“I think if he had threatened to kill me it would have been more possible than his hints and sobs. The thing went along for a month, then six weeks, and nothing more happened. I started again and again to tell them at the store, two miles back in the pines, but I could never get away from Nicholas; he was always at my shoulder, muttering and twisting his hands.“At last I found something.” She hesitated, glancing once more down through the empty gloom, while her fingers swiftly fumbled in the band of her waist.“I was cleaning his room—it simply had to be done—and had out a bureau drawer, when I saw this underneath. He was not in the house, and I took one look at it, then put the things back as near as possible as they were. I was so frightened that I slipped it in my dress—had no chance to return it.”He took from her unresisting hand a folded rectangle of coarse grey paper; and, opening it, found a small handbill with the crudely reproduced photograph of a man’s head with a long, drooping nose, sleepy eyes in thick folds of flesh, and a lax under-lip with a fixed, dull smile:WANTED FORMURDER!The authorities of Coweta offer THREEHUNDREDDOLLARSfor the apprehension of the below, Iscah Nicholas, convicted of the murder of Elizabeth Slakto, an aged woman.General description: Age about forty-eight. Head receding, with large nose and stupid expression. Body corpulent but strong. Nicholas has no trade and works at general utility. He is a homicidal maniac.WANTED FORMURDER!“He told me that his name was Nicholas Brandt,” Millie noted in her dull voice.A new gravity possessed John Woolfolk.“You must not go back to the house,” he decided.“Wait,” she replied. “I was terribly frightened when he went up to his room. When he came down he thanked me for cleaning it. I told him he was mistaken, that I hadn’t been in there, but I could see he was suspicious. He cried all the time he was cooking dinner, in a queer, choked way; and afterward touched me—on the arm. I swam, but all the water in the bay wouldn’t take away the feel of his fingers. Then I saw the boat—you came ashore.King Vidor’s “Wild Oranges.”A Goldwyn Picture.A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.“Nicholas was dreadfully upset, and hid in the pines for a day or more. He told me if I spoke of him it would happen, and if I left it would happen—to father. Then he came back. He said that you were—were in love with me, and that I must send you away. He added that you must go today, for he couldn’t stand waiting any more. He said that he wanted to be right, but that things were against him. This morning he got dreadful—if I fooled him he’d get you, and me, too, and then there was always father for something extra special. That, he warned me, would happen if I stayed away for more than an hour.” She rose, trembling violently. “Perhaps it’s been an hour now. I must go back.”John Woolfolk thought rapidly; his face was grim. If he had brought a pistol from the ketch he would have shot Iscah Nicholas without hesitation. Unarmed, he was reluctant to precipitate a crisis with such serious possibilities. He could secure one from theGar, but even that short lapse of time might prove fatal—to Millie or Lichfield Stope. Millie’s story was patently fact in every detail. He thought more rapidly still—desperately.“I must go back,” she repeated, her words lost in a sudden blast of wind under the dilapidated roof.He saw that she was right.“Very well,” he acquiesced. “Tell him that you saw me, and that I promised to go tonight. Act quietly; say that you have been upset, but that you will give him an answer tomorrow. Then at eight o’clock—it will be dark early tonight—walk out to the wharf. That is all. But it must be done without any hesitation; you must be even cheerful, kinder to him.”He was thinking: She must be out of the way when I meet Nicholas. She must not be subjected to the ordeal that will release her from the dread fast crushing her spirit.She swayed, and he caught her, held her upright, circled in his steady arms.“Don’t let him hurt us,” she gasped. “Oh, don’t!”“Not now,” he reassured her. “Nicholas is finished. But you must help by doing exactly as I have told you. You’d better go on. It won’t be long, hardly three hours, until freedom.”She laid her cold cheek against his face, while her arms crept round his neck. She said nothing; and he held her to him with a sudden throb of feeling. They stood for a moment in the deepening gloom, bound in a straining embrace, while the rats gnawed in the sagging walls of the store and the storm thrashed without. She reluctantly descended the stair, crossed the broken floor and disappeared through the door.A sudden unwillingness to have her return alone to the sobbing menace of Iscah Nicholas, the impotent wraith that had been Lichfield Stope, carried him in an impetuous stride to the stair. But there he halted. The plan he had made held, in its simplicity, a larger measure of safety than any immediate, unconsidered course.John Woolfolk waited until she had had time to enter the orange-grove; then he followed, turning toward the beach.He found Halvard already at the sand’s edge, waiting uneasily with the tender, and they crossed the broken water to where theGar’scabin flung out a remote, peaceful light.

John Woolfolk, in dripping yellow oilskins, occasionally circled the deck of his ketch. Halvard had everything in a perfection of order. When the rain stopped, the sailor dropped into the tender and with a boat sponge bailed vigorously. Soon after, Woolfolk stepped out upon the beach. He was without any plan but the determination to put aside whatever obstacles held Millie from him. This rapidly crystallized into the resolve to take her with him before another day ended. His feeling for her, increasing to a passionate need, had destroyed the suspension, the deliberate calm of his life, as the storm had dissipated the sunny peace of the coast.

He paused before the ruined façade, weighing her statement that it would have been better if he had not returned; and he wondered how that would affect her willingness, her ability, to see him today. He added the word “ability” instinctively and without explanation. And he decided that, in order to have any satisfactory speech with her, he must come upon her alone, away from the house. Then he could force her to hear to the finish what he wanted to say; in the open they might escape from the inexplicable inhibition that lay upon her expression of feeling, of desire. It would be necessary, at the same time, to avoid the notice of anyone who would warn her of his presence. This precluded his waiting at the familiar place on the rotting wharf.

Three marble steps, awry and moldy, descended to the lawn from a French window in the side of the desolate mansion. They were screened by a tangle of rose-mallow, and there John Woolfolk seated himself—waiting.

The wind shrilled about the corner of the house; there was a mournful clatter of shingles from above and the frenzied lashing of boughs. The noise was so great that he failed to hear the slightest indication of the approach of Nicholas until that individual passed directly before him. Nicholas stopped at the inner fringe of the beach and, from a point where he could not be seen from the ketch, stood gazing out at theGarpounding on her long anchor chains. The man remained for an oppressively extended period; Woolfolk could see his heavy, drooping shoulders and sunken head; and then the other moved to the left, crossing the rough open behind the oleanders. Woolfolk had a momentary glimpse of a huge nose and rapidly moving lips above an impotent chin.

Nicholas, he realized, remained a complete enigma to him; beyond the conviction that the man was, in some minor way, leaden-witted, he knew nothing.

A brief, watery ray of sunlight fell through a rift in the flying clouds and stained the tossing foliage pale gold; it was followed by a sudden drift of rain, then once more the naked wind. Woolfolk was fast determining to go up to the house and insist upon Millie’s hearing him, when unexpectedly she appeared in a somber, fluttering cloak, with her head uncovered and hair blown back from her pale brow. He waited until she had passed him, and then rose, softly calling her name.

She stopped and turned, with a hand pressed to her heart. “I was afraid you’d gone out,” she told him. “The sea is like a pack of wolves.” Her voice was a low complexity of relief and fear.

“Not alone,” he replied; “not without you.”

“Madness,” she murmured, gathering her wavering cloak about her breast. She swayed, graceful as a reed in the wind, charged with potency. He made an involuntary gesture toward her with his arms; but in a sudden accession of fear she eluded him.

“We must talk,” he told her. “There is a great deal that needs explaining, that—I think—I have a right to know, the right of your dependence on something to save you from yourself. There is another right, but only you can give that—”

“Indeed,” she interrupted tensely, “you mustn’t stand here talking to me.”

“I shall allow nothing to interrupt us,” he returned decidedly. “I have been long enough in the dark.”

“But you don’t understand what you will, perhaps, bring on yourself—on me.”

“I’m forced to ignore even that last.”

She glanced hurriedly about. “Not here then, if you must.”

She walked from him, toward the second ruined pile that fronted the bay. The steps to the gaping entrance had rotted away and they were forced to mount an insecure side piece. The interior, as Woolfolk had seen, was composed of one high room, while, above, a narrow, open second story hung like a ledge. On both sides were long counters with mounting sets of shelves behind them.

“This was the store,” Millie told him. “It was a great estate.”

A dim and moldering fragment of cotton stuff was hanging from a forgotten bolt; above, some tinware was eaten with rust; a scale had crushed in the floor and lay broken on the earth beneath; and a ledger, its leaves a single, sodden film of grey, was still open on a counter. A precarious stair mounted to the flooring above, and Millie Stope made her way upward, followed by Woolfolk.

There, in the double gloom of the clouds and a small dormer window obscured by cobwebs, she sank on a broken box. The decayed walls shook perilously in the blasts of the wind. Below they could see the empty floor, and through the doorway the somber, gleaming greenery without.

All the patient expostulation that John Woolfolk had prepared disappeared in a sudden tyranny of emotion, of hunger for the slender, weary figure before him. Seating himself at her side, he burst into a torrential expression of passionate desire that mounted with the tide of his eager words. He caught her hands, held them in a painful grip, and gazed down into her still, frightened face. He stopped abruptly, was silent for a tempestuous moment, and then baldly repeated the fact of his love.

Millie Stope said:

“I know so little about the love you mean.” Her voice trailed to silence; and in a lull of the storm they heard the thin patter of rats on the floor below, the stir of bats among the rafters.

“It’s quickly learned,” he assured her. “Millie, do you feel any response at all in your heart—the slightest return of my longing?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, turning toward him a troubled scrutiny. “Perhaps in another surrounding, with things different, I might care for you very much—”

“I am going to take you into that other surrounding,” he announced.

She ignored his interruption. “But we shall never have a chance to learn.” She silenced his attempted protest with a cool, flexible palm against his mouth. “Life,” she continued, “is so dreadfully in the dark. One is lost at the beginning. There are maps to take you safely to the Guianas, but none for souls. Perhaps religions are—Again I don’t know. I have found nothing secure—only a whirlpool into which I will not drag others.”

“I will drag you out,” he asserted.

She smiled at him, in a momentary tenderness, and continued: “When I was young I never doubted that I would conquer life. I pictured myself rising in triumph over circumstance, as a gull leaves the sea.... When I was young.... If I was afraid of the dark then I thought, of course, I would outgrow it; but it has grown deeper than my courage. The night is terrible now.” A shiver passed over her.

“You are ill,” he insisted, “but you shall be cured.”

“Perhaps, a year ago, something might have been done, with assistance; yes—with you. Then, whatever is, hadn’t materialized. Why did you delay?” she cried in a sudden suffering.

“You’ll go with me tonight,” he declared stoutly.

“In this?” She indicated the wind beating with the blows of a great fist against the swaying sides of the demolished store. “Have you seen the sea? Do you remember what happened on the day I went with you when it was so beautiful and still?”

John Woolfolk realized, wakened to a renewed mental clearness by the threatening of all that he desired, that—as Millie had intimated—life was too complicated to be solved by a simple longing; love was not the all-powerful magician of conventional acceptance; there were other, no less profound, depths.

He resolutely abandoned his mere inchoate wanting, and considered the elements of the position that were known to him. There was, in the first place, that old, lamentable dereliction of Lichfield Stope’s, and its aftermath in his daughter. Millie had just recalled to Woolfolk the duration, the activity, of its poison. Here there was no possibility of escape by mere removal; the stain was within; and it must be thoroughly cleansed before she could cope successfully, happily, with life. In this, he was forced to acknowledge, he could help her but little; it was an affair of spirit; and spiritual values—though they might be supported from without—had their growth and decrease strictly in the individual they animated.

Still, he argued, a normal existence, a sense of security, would accomplish a great deal; and that in turn hung upon the elimination of the second, unknown element—the reason for her backward glances, her sudden, loud banalities, yesterday’s mechanical repudiation of his offered assistance and the implied wish for him to go. He said gravely:

“I have been impatient, but you came so sharply into my empty existence that I was upset. If you are ill you can cure yourself. Never forget your mother’s ‘brave heart.’ But there is something objective, immediate, threatening you. Tell me what it is, Millie, and together we will overcome and put it away from you for ever.”

She gazed panic-stricken into the empty gloom below. “No! no!” she exclaimed, rising. “You don’t know. I won’t drag you down. You must go away at once, tonight, even in the storm.”

“What is it?” he demanded.

She stood rigidly erect with her eyes shut and hands clasped at her sides. Then she slid down upon the box, lifting to him a white mask of fright.

“It’s Nicholas,” she said, hardly above her breath.

A sudden relief swept over John Woolfolk. In his mind he dismissed as negligible the heavy man fumbling beneath his soiled apron. He wondered how the other could have got such a grip on Millie Stope’s imagination.

The mystery that had enveloped her was fast disappearing, leaving them without an obstacle to the happiness he proposed. Woolfolk said curtly:

“Has Nicholas been annoying you?”

She shivered, with clasped straining hands.

“He says he’s crazy about me,” she told him in a shuddering voice that contracted his heart. “He says that I must—must marry him, or—” Her period trailed abruptly out to silence.

Woolfolk grew animated with determination, an immediate purpose.

“Where would Nicholas be at this hour?” he asked.

She rose hastily, clinging to his arm. “You mustn’t,” she exclaimed, yet not loudly. “You don’t know! He is watching—something frightful would happen.”

“Nothing ‘frightful,’” he returned tolerantly, preparing to descend. “Only unfortunate for Nicholas.”

“You mustn’t,” she repeated desperately, her sheer weight hanging from her hands clasped about his neck. “Nicholas is not—not human. There’s something funny about him. I don’t mean funny, I—”

He unclasped her fingers and quietly forced her back to the seat on the box. Then he took a place at her side.

“Now,” he asked reasonably, “what is this about Nicholas?”

She glanced down into the desolate cavern of the store; the ghostly remnant of cotton goods fluttered in a draft like a torn and grimy cobweb; the lower floor was palpably bare.

“He came in April,” she commenced in a voice without any life. “The woman we had had for years was dead; and when Nicholas asked for work we were glad to take him. He wanted the smallest possible wages and was willing to do everything; he even cooked quite nicely. At first he was jumpy—he had asked if many strangers went by; but then when no one appeared he got easier.... He got easier and began to do extra things for me. I thanked him—until I understood. Then I asked father to send him away, but he was afraid; and, before I could get up my courage to do it, Nicholas spoke—

“He said he was crazy about me, and would I please try and be good to him. He had always wanted to marry, he went on, and live right, but things had gone against him. I told him that he was impertinent and that he would have to go at once; but he cried and begged me not to say that, not to get him ‘started.’”

That, John Woolfolk recalled, was precisely what the man had said to him.

“I went back to father and told him why he must send Nicholas off, but father nearly suffocated. He turned almost black. Then I got frightened and locked myself in my room, while Nicholas sat out on the stair and sobbed all night. It was ghastly! In the morning I had to go down, and he went about his duties as usual.

“That evening he spoke again, on the porch, twisting his hands exactly as if he were making bread. He repeated that he wanted me to be nice to him. He said something wrong would happen if I pushed him to it.

“I think if he had threatened to kill me it would have been more possible than his hints and sobs. The thing went along for a month, then six weeks, and nothing more happened. I started again and again to tell them at the store, two miles back in the pines, but I could never get away from Nicholas; he was always at my shoulder, muttering and twisting his hands.

“At last I found something.” She hesitated, glancing once more down through the empty gloom, while her fingers swiftly fumbled in the band of her waist.

“I was cleaning his room—it simply had to be done—and had out a bureau drawer, when I saw this underneath. He was not in the house, and I took one look at it, then put the things back as near as possible as they were. I was so frightened that I slipped it in my dress—had no chance to return it.”

He took from her unresisting hand a folded rectangle of coarse grey paper; and, opening it, found a small handbill with the crudely reproduced photograph of a man’s head with a long, drooping nose, sleepy eyes in thick folds of flesh, and a lax under-lip with a fixed, dull smile:

WANTED FORMURDER!The authorities of Coweta offer THREEHUNDREDDOLLARSfor the apprehension of the below, Iscah Nicholas, convicted of the murder of Elizabeth Slakto, an aged woman.General description: Age about forty-eight. Head receding, with large nose and stupid expression. Body corpulent but strong. Nicholas has no trade and works at general utility. He is a homicidal maniac.WANTED FORMURDER!

WANTED FORMURDER!

The authorities of Coweta offer THREEHUNDREDDOLLARSfor the apprehension of the below, Iscah Nicholas, convicted of the murder of Elizabeth Slakto, an aged woman.

General description: Age about forty-eight. Head receding, with large nose and stupid expression. Body corpulent but strong. Nicholas has no trade and works at general utility. He is a homicidal maniac.

WANTED FORMURDER!

“He told me that his name was Nicholas Brandt,” Millie noted in her dull voice.

A new gravity possessed John Woolfolk.

“You must not go back to the house,” he decided.

“Wait,” she replied. “I was terribly frightened when he went up to his room. When he came down he thanked me for cleaning it. I told him he was mistaken, that I hadn’t been in there, but I could see he was suspicious. He cried all the time he was cooking dinner, in a queer, choked way; and afterward touched me—on the arm. I swam, but all the water in the bay wouldn’t take away the feel of his fingers. Then I saw the boat—you came ashore.

King Vidor’s “Wild Oranges.”A Goldwyn Picture.A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.

“Nicholas was dreadfully upset, and hid in the pines for a day or more. He told me if I spoke of him it would happen, and if I left it would happen—to father. Then he came back. He said that you were—were in love with me, and that I must send you away. He added that you must go today, for he couldn’t stand waiting any more. He said that he wanted to be right, but that things were against him. This morning he got dreadful—if I fooled him he’d get you, and me, too, and then there was always father for something extra special. That, he warned me, would happen if I stayed away for more than an hour.” She rose, trembling violently. “Perhaps it’s been an hour now. I must go back.”

John Woolfolk thought rapidly; his face was grim. If he had brought a pistol from the ketch he would have shot Iscah Nicholas without hesitation. Unarmed, he was reluctant to precipitate a crisis with such serious possibilities. He could secure one from theGar, but even that short lapse of time might prove fatal—to Millie or Lichfield Stope. Millie’s story was patently fact in every detail. He thought more rapidly still—desperately.

“I must go back,” she repeated, her words lost in a sudden blast of wind under the dilapidated roof.

He saw that she was right.

“Very well,” he acquiesced. “Tell him that you saw me, and that I promised to go tonight. Act quietly; say that you have been upset, but that you will give him an answer tomorrow. Then at eight o’clock—it will be dark early tonight—walk out to the wharf. That is all. But it must be done without any hesitation; you must be even cheerful, kinder to him.”

He was thinking: She must be out of the way when I meet Nicholas. She must not be subjected to the ordeal that will release her from the dread fast crushing her spirit.

She swayed, and he caught her, held her upright, circled in his steady arms.

“Don’t let him hurt us,” she gasped. “Oh, don’t!”

“Not now,” he reassured her. “Nicholas is finished. But you must help by doing exactly as I have told you. You’d better go on. It won’t be long, hardly three hours, until freedom.”

She laid her cold cheek against his face, while her arms crept round his neck. She said nothing; and he held her to him with a sudden throb of feeling. They stood for a moment in the deepening gloom, bound in a straining embrace, while the rats gnawed in the sagging walls of the store and the storm thrashed without. She reluctantly descended the stair, crossed the broken floor and disappeared through the door.

A sudden unwillingness to have her return alone to the sobbing menace of Iscah Nicholas, the impotent wraith that had been Lichfield Stope, carried him in an impetuous stride to the stair. But there he halted. The plan he had made held, in its simplicity, a larger measure of safety than any immediate, unconsidered course.

John Woolfolk waited until she had had time to enter the orange-grove; then he followed, turning toward the beach.

He found Halvard already at the sand’s edge, waiting uneasily with the tender, and they crossed the broken water to where theGar’scabin flung out a remote, peaceful light.

THEsailor immediately set about his familiar, homely tasks, while Woolfolk made a minute inspection of the ketch’s rigging. He descended to supper with an expression of abstraction, and ate mechanically whatever was placed before him. Afterward he rolled a cigarette, which he neglected to light, and sat motionless, chin on breast, in the warm stillness.Halvard cleared the table and John Woolfolk roused himself. He turned to the shelf that ran above the berths and secured a small, locked tin box. For an hour or more he was engaged alternately writing and carefully reading various papers sealed with vermilion wafers. Then he called Halvard.“I’ll get you to witness these signatures,” he said, rising. Poul Halvard hesitated; then, with a furrowed brow, clumsily grasped the pen. “Here,” Woolfolk indicated. The man wrote slowly, linking fortuitously the unsteady letters of his name. This arduous task accomplished, he immediately rose. John Woolfolk again took his place, turning to address the other, when he saw that one side of Halvard’s face was bluish and rapidly swelling.“What’s the matter with your jaw?” he promptly inquired.Halvard avoided his gaze, obviously reluctant to speak, but Woolfolk’s silent interrogation was insistent. Then:“I met that Nicholas,” Halvard admitted; “without a knife.”“Well?” Woolfolk insisted.“There’s something wrong with this cursed place,” Halvard said defiantly. “You can laugh, but there’s a matter in the air that’s not natural. My grandmother could have named it. She heard the ravens that called Tollfsen’s death, and read Linga’s eyes before she strangulated herself. Anyhow, when you didn’t come back I got doubtful and took the tender in. Then I saw Nicholas beating up through the bushes, hiding here and there, and doubling through the grass; so I came on him from the back and—and kicked him, quite sudden.“He went on his hands, but got up quick for a hulk like himself. Sir, this is hard to believe, but it’s Biblical—he didn’t take any more notice of the kick than if it had been a flag halyard brushed against him. He said ‘Go away,’ and waved his foolish hands.“I closed in, still careful of the knife, with a remark, and got onto his heart. He only coughed and kept telling me in a crying whisper to go away. Nicholas pushed me back—that’s how I got this face. What was the use? I might as well have hit a pudding. Even talk didn’t move him. In a little it sent me cold.” He stopped abruptly, grew sullen; it was evident that he would say no more in that direction. Woolfolk opened another subject:“Life, Halvard,” he said, “is uncertain; perhaps tonight I shall find it absolutely unreliable. What I am getting at is this: if anything happens to me—death, to be accurate—theGaris yours, the ketch and a sum of money. It is secured to you in this box, which you will deliver to my address in Boston. There is another provision that I’ll mention merely to give you the opportunity to repeat it verbally from my lips: the bulk of anything I have, in the possibility we are considering, will go to a Miss Stope, the daughter of Lichfield Stope, formerly of Virginia.” He stood up. “Halvard,” Woolfolk said abruptly, extending his hand, expressing for the first time his repeated thought, “you are a good man. You are the only steady quantity I have ever known. I have paid you for a part of this, but the most is beyond dollars. That I am now acknowledging.”Halvard was cruelly embarrassed. He waited, obviously desiring a chance to retreat, and Woolfolk continued in a different vein:“I want the canvas division rigged across the cabin and three berths made. Then get the yacht ready to go out at any time.”One thing more remained; and, going deeper into the tin box, John Woolfolk brought out a packet of square envelopes addressed to him in a faded, angular hand. They were all that remained now of his youth, of the past. Not a ghost, not a remembered fragrance nor accent, rose from the delicate paper. They had been the property of a man dead twelve years ago, slain by incomprehensible mischance; and the man in the contracted cabin, vibrating from the elemental and violent forces without, forebore to open them. He burned the packet to a blackish ash on a plate.It was, he saw from the chronometer, seven o’clock; and he rose charged with tense energy, engaged in activities of a far different order. He unwrapped from many folds of oiled silk a flat, amorphous pistol, uglier in its bleak outline than the familiar weapons of more graceful days; and, sliding into place a filled cartridge clip, he threw a load into the barrel. This he deposited in the pocket of a black wool jacket, closely buttoned about his long, hard body, and went up on deck.Halvard, in a glistening yellow coat, came close up to him, speaking with the wind whipping the words from his lips. He said: “She’s ready, sir.”For a moment Woolfolk made no answer; he stood gazing anxiously into the dark that enveloped and hid Millie Stope from him. There was another darkness about her, thicker than the mere night, like a black cerement dropping over her soul. His eyes narrowed as he replied to the sailor: “Good!”

Halvard cleared the table and John Woolfolk roused himself. He turned to the shelf that ran above the berths and secured a small, locked tin box. For an hour or more he was engaged alternately writing and carefully reading various papers sealed with vermilion wafers. Then he called Halvard.

“I’ll get you to witness these signatures,” he said, rising. Poul Halvard hesitated; then, with a furrowed brow, clumsily grasped the pen. “Here,” Woolfolk indicated. The man wrote slowly, linking fortuitously the unsteady letters of his name. This arduous task accomplished, he immediately rose. John Woolfolk again took his place, turning to address the other, when he saw that one side of Halvard’s face was bluish and rapidly swelling.

“What’s the matter with your jaw?” he promptly inquired.

Halvard avoided his gaze, obviously reluctant to speak, but Woolfolk’s silent interrogation was insistent. Then:

“I met that Nicholas,” Halvard admitted; “without a knife.”

“Well?” Woolfolk insisted.

“There’s something wrong with this cursed place,” Halvard said defiantly. “You can laugh, but there’s a matter in the air that’s not natural. My grandmother could have named it. She heard the ravens that called Tollfsen’s death, and read Linga’s eyes before she strangulated herself. Anyhow, when you didn’t come back I got doubtful and took the tender in. Then I saw Nicholas beating up through the bushes, hiding here and there, and doubling through the grass; so I came on him from the back and—and kicked him, quite sudden.

“He went on his hands, but got up quick for a hulk like himself. Sir, this is hard to believe, but it’s Biblical—he didn’t take any more notice of the kick than if it had been a flag halyard brushed against him. He said ‘Go away,’ and waved his foolish hands.

“I closed in, still careful of the knife, with a remark, and got onto his heart. He only coughed and kept telling me in a crying whisper to go away. Nicholas pushed me back—that’s how I got this face. What was the use? I might as well have hit a pudding. Even talk didn’t move him. In a little it sent me cold.” He stopped abruptly, grew sullen; it was evident that he would say no more in that direction. Woolfolk opened another subject:

“Life, Halvard,” he said, “is uncertain; perhaps tonight I shall find it absolutely unreliable. What I am getting at is this: if anything happens to me—death, to be accurate—theGaris yours, the ketch and a sum of money. It is secured to you in this box, which you will deliver to my address in Boston. There is another provision that I’ll mention merely to give you the opportunity to repeat it verbally from my lips: the bulk of anything I have, in the possibility we are considering, will go to a Miss Stope, the daughter of Lichfield Stope, formerly of Virginia.” He stood up. “Halvard,” Woolfolk said abruptly, extending his hand, expressing for the first time his repeated thought, “you are a good man. You are the only steady quantity I have ever known. I have paid you for a part of this, but the most is beyond dollars. That I am now acknowledging.”

Halvard was cruelly embarrassed. He waited, obviously desiring a chance to retreat, and Woolfolk continued in a different vein:

“I want the canvas division rigged across the cabin and three berths made. Then get the yacht ready to go out at any time.”

One thing more remained; and, going deeper into the tin box, John Woolfolk brought out a packet of square envelopes addressed to him in a faded, angular hand. They were all that remained now of his youth, of the past. Not a ghost, not a remembered fragrance nor accent, rose from the delicate paper. They had been the property of a man dead twelve years ago, slain by incomprehensible mischance; and the man in the contracted cabin, vibrating from the elemental and violent forces without, forebore to open them. He burned the packet to a blackish ash on a plate.

It was, he saw from the chronometer, seven o’clock; and he rose charged with tense energy, engaged in activities of a far different order. He unwrapped from many folds of oiled silk a flat, amorphous pistol, uglier in its bleak outline than the familiar weapons of more graceful days; and, sliding into place a filled cartridge clip, he threw a load into the barrel. This he deposited in the pocket of a black wool jacket, closely buttoned about his long, hard body, and went up on deck.

Halvard, in a glistening yellow coat, came close up to him, speaking with the wind whipping the words from his lips. He said: “She’s ready, sir.”

For a moment Woolfolk made no answer; he stood gazing anxiously into the dark that enveloped and hid Millie Stope from him. There was another darkness about her, thicker than the mere night, like a black cerement dropping over her soul. His eyes narrowed as he replied to the sailor: “Good!”

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