“Antonia!”

With a stifled exclamation, the hesitating girl vanished out of the path.  A bush near by rustled; then silence.  I waited wondering.  The lights on the verandah went out.  I waited a while longer then continued down the path to my boat, wondering more than ever.

I remember the occurrences of that visit especially, because this was the last time I saw the Nelson bungalow.  On arriving at the Straits I found cable messages which made it necessary for me to throw up my employment at a moment’s notice and go home at once.  I had a desperate scramble to catch the mailboat which was due to leave next day, but I found time to write two short notes, one to Freya, the other to Jasper.  Later on I wrote at length, this time to Allen alone.  I got no answer.  I hunted up then his brother, or, rather, half-brother, a solicitor in the city, a sallow, calm, little man who looked at me over his spectacles thoughtfully.

Jasper was the only child of his father’s second marriage, a transaction which had failed to commend itself to the first, grown-up family.

“You haven’t heard for ages,” I repeated, with secret annoyance.  “May I ask what ‘for ages’ means in this connection?”

“It means that I don’t care whether I ever hear from him or not,” retorted the little man of law, turning nasty suddenly.

I could not blame Jasper for not wasting his time in correspondence with such an outrageous relative.  But why didn’t he write to me—­a decent sort of friend, after all; enough of a friend to find for his silence the excuse of forgetfulness natural to a state of transcendental bliss?  I waited indulgently, but nothing ever came.  And the East seemed to drop out of my life without an echo, like a stone falling into a well of prodigious depth.

CHAPTER IV

I suppose praiseworthy motives are a sufficient justification almost for anything.  What could be more commendable in the abstract than a girl’s determination that “poor papa” should not be worried, and her anxiety that the man of her choice should be kept by any means from every occasion of doing something rash, something which might endanger the whole scheme of their happiness?

Nothing could be more tender and more prudent.  We must also remember the girl’s self-reliant temperament, and the general unwillingness of women—­I mean women of sense—­to make a fuss over matters of that sort.

As has been said already, Heemskirk turned up some time after Jasper’s arrival at Nelson’s Cove.  The sight of the brig lying right under the bungalow was very offensive to him.  He did not fly ashore before his anchor touched the ground as Jasper used to do.  On the contrary, he hung about his quarter-deck mumbling to himself; and when he ordered his boat to be manned it was in an angry voice.  Freya’s existence, which lifted Jasper out of himself into a blissful elation, was for Heemskirk a cause of secret torment, of hours of exasperated brooding.