She was very lovely, Harber tells me, in a fiery rose-red of the fairy-tale way; though even without beauty it needn't have been hard for her.

Because, of course, she couldn't have foreseen, even by the surest instinct, the coincidence that brought Harber and Barton together.

Or again, do I wrong her there, and were there no more than the two of them, and did she simply suffer a solitary revulsion of feeling, as Harber did?

But no, I'm sure I'm right in supposing Barton and Harber to have been but two ventures out of many, two arrows out of a full quiver shot in the dark at the bull's-eye of fortune.

"If I were on it," said Harber slowly.

Harber was startled for a moment.

Harber laughed in her face.

And then, you know, Harber had had her letters.

Harber says they talked all that afternoon and evening, and well into the next morning, enthusiastically finding one another the veritable salt of the earth, honourable, level-headed, congenial, temperamentally fitted for exactly what they had in mindpartnership.

And Farringdon was ready to put the earnings from his schooner against Harber's wage as manager.

In all likelihood, Harber thinks, permanently.

Harber, says Farringdon, has "the golden touch."

So" "It's the better place to beout here," said Harber abruptly.

There was a sort of passionate fineness about her that caught and answered some instinct in Harber ...

"If you should" And just at that moment, Harber says, anything seemed possible to him, and he said eagerly: "Yesif you willI should like" How well they understood one another is evident from that.

Harber produced a pencil, and groped for something to write upon.

What were you doing?" asked Harber.

well...." Harber nodded.

" Harber, looking at him, thought that it would, indeed.

He opened his eyes with an infinite weariness as Harber entered the room, and achieved a smile.

But you see" Harber's mind, slipping back down the years, with Barton, to his own parting, stopped with a jerk.

He did not appear to have heard Harber's exclamation over the phrase so like that Janet had given him.

Harber saw leaping up before him, with terrible clarity, as if it were etched upon his mind, that night in Tawnleytown ten years before.

So reasoned Harber.

Harber, having called the doctor, went to his stateroom.