Bedient could not lie to himself.  He wanted to run away.  He wanted to sit at the knees of some old Gobind.  Never since the night his mother had taken him in her arms, had he so needed to lean....  Yes. he had failed to find favor—­in finding the woman.

And now came to him the inevitable thought, and not without savagery to one of his nature:  Was his high theme of uplift for women stimulated from the beginning by his need of a human mate?  Was it a mere man-passion, which had charmed all his thoughts of women, from a boy?  Was this the glow which had illuminated his work in the world, during the maturing silences of the Punjab?  Was it physical, and not spiritual—­this love of all women, until he had come into his love of one?  And must he lose the broader love—­in missing the love of one?

The answer lay dark in his consciousness.  Ways to bring happiness to women had come to him, but to carry them out now was mere obedience to the old galvanism.  He faced this realization with deadly shame....

“You will learn to look within for the woman.”  And what was left within?  In a kind of desperation, Bedient turned to this inventory.  The old faith of the soul in God, in the Son, and in the Blessed Mother-Spirit still stood, apart and above the wreckage, unassailed.  This was Light.

In these furious days of disintegration Bedient’s soul-faith was not brought to test.  A woman’s might have fallen with her love....  But the mighty passionate being, that was roused to commanding actions in that high sunlit hour, died slowly and with agonies untellable.

The Hatteras steamed out of the gale, as she had done out of many another, in the same riotous stretch of sea-water.  Bedient had become known aboard from his association with Captain Carreras.  It was during the first dinner of the voyage that certain interesting information transpired from the conversation of Captain Bloom.

“Insurrection was smoking down there when we left ten days ago.  We expected to hear in New York that the shooting had begun.  Celestino Rey very nearly got a body-blow over, while we were hung up in port before the last trip up.  Jaffier, the old Dictator, had just stepped out of his dingy little capitol, when a rifle-ball tore through his sleeve, between his arm and ribs.  His sentries clubbed the rifle-man to death in the street——­”

“It’s rather a peculiar situation as I understand it,” Bedient said.  “The death of either leader——­”

“Would mean an end to his party.  That’s it exactly,” said Captain Bloom.

A lively listener to this talk at the Captain’s table was a dark-haired young woman with dancing brown eyes—­Miss Adith Mallory.  She was slender, and not tall, but spirited in manner; exhibited a fine freedom with her new acquaintances at the table, mostly gentlemen, but with an elegance which repelled familiarity.  Miss Mallory seemed to find great fun in these revolutionary affairs, and a deep interest in Andrew Bedient, and his vast holdings on the Island.  Her eyes quickly recalled to Bedient’s mind a line of Tennyson’s—­“Sunset and evening star, and after that the dark.”