“I’d have been there yet, if it hadn’t been for a girl there, a half-Chinese, quarter-white, and quarter-Hawaiian.  She was a beauty, poor thing, and well educated.  Her mother, in Honolulu, was worth a million or so.  Well, this girl got me away at last.  Her mother financed the settlement, you see, so the girl wasn’t afraid of being punished for letting me go.  But she made me swear, first, never to reveal the hiding-place; and I never have.  This is the first time I have even mentioned it.  The girl had just the first signs of leprosy.  The fingers of her right hand were slightly twisted, and there was a small spot on her arm.  That was all.  I guess she is dead, now.”

“But weren’t you frightened?  And weren’t you glad to get away without catching that dreadful disease?”

“Well,” he confessed, “I was a bit shivery at first; but I got used to it.  I used to feel sorry for that poor girl, though.  That made me forget to be afraid.  She was such a beauty, in spirit as well as in appearance, and she was only slightly touched; yet she was doomed to lie there, living the life of a primitive savage and rotting slowly away.  Leprosy is far more terrible than you can imagine it.”

“Poor thing,” Ruth murmured softly.  “It’s a wonder she let you get away.”

“How do you mean?” Martin asked unwittingly.

“Because she must have loved you,” Ruth said, still softly.  “Candidly, now, didn’t she?”

Martin’s sunburn had been bleached by his work in the laundry and by the indoor life he was living, while the hunger and the sickness had made his face even pale; and across this pallor flowed the slow wave of a blush.  He was opening his mouth to speak, but Ruth shut him off.

“Never mind, don’t answer; it’s not necessary,” she laughed.

But it seemed to him there was something metallic in her laughter, and that the light in her eyes was cold.  On the spur of the moment it reminded him of a gale he had once experienced in the North Pacific.  And for the moment the apparition of the gale rose before his eyes—­a gale at night, with a clear sky and under a full moon, the huge seas glinting coldly in the moonlight.  Next, he saw the girl in the leper refuge and remembered it was for love of him that she had let him go.

“She was noble,” he said simply.  “She gave me life.”

That was all of the incident, but he heard Ruth muffle a dry sob in her throat, and noticed that she turned her face away to gaze out of the window.  When she turned it back to him, it was composed, and there was no hint of the gale in her eyes.

“I’m such a silly,” she said plaintively.  “But I can’t help it.  I do so love you, Martin, I do, I do.  I shall grow more catholic in time, but at present I can’t help being jealous of those ghosts of the past, and you know your past is full of ghosts.”

“It must be,” she silenced his protest.  “It could not be otherwise.  And there’s poor Arthur motioning me to come.  He’s tired waiting.  And now good-by, dear.”