The unearthly stillness combined with the brilliant, unabated, unfailing light had a curious mystery about it that charmed and delighted me.  The sea, so blue and tranquil, sparkled softly on my left hand, the pellucid blue of the sky stretched overhead, and all the air was full of the sweet sunshine we associate with day.  Yet it was midnight.  I pulled out my watch and looked at it to assure myself of the fact.  Sitka was wrapt in silence and sleep, my own footstep resounded strangely in the burning empty streets.

I had to pass the tea-shop on my way to the ship.  One could see nothing of it from the street as the compound shut it off from view, and across the compound entrance a stout hurdle was now stretched and barred.

I passed on with a sigh, reached the ship lying motionless against the quay, went down to my cabin without encountering any one, threw off my clothes and myself in my berth, feeling a sense of fatigue obliterating thought.

The night before I had had no sleep, and the incessant golden glare, day and night alike, wearies the nerves not trained to it.

Suzee and almond eyes and injured husbands floated away from me on the dark wings of sleep.

It must have been an hour or so later that I woke suddenly with a sense of suffocation.  Some soft, heavy thing lay across my breast.  I started up and two arms clasped my neck and I heard Suzee’s voice; saying in my ear: 

“Treevor, dear Treevor, I have found you!  Now I you will take me away, and we will stay for ever and ever together.  I am so happy.”

The cabin was full of the same steady yellow light as when I closed my eyes.  Looking up I saw her sweet oval face above me.

She was lying on the berth leaning over me, supported on her elbows.

As I looked up she pressed her lips down on my face, kissing me on the eyes and mouth with passionate repetition and insistence.

“Dear little girl, dear little Suzee!” I answered, putting up my arms and folding them round her.

I was only half-awake, and for a moment the old Chinaman was forgotten.  It was all rather like a delicious dream.

“I am quite, quite happy now,” she said, laying down her head on my chest.  “Oh, so happy, Treevor; you must never let me go.  I love you so, like this,” she added, putting her two hands round my throat, “when I can feel your neck and when you are sleeping.  You looked beautiful, just now, when I found you.  I am sorry you woke.”

Clear consciousness was struggling back now with memory, but not before I had pressed her to me and returned those kisses.  She had laid aside her little saffron silk coat, and her breast and arms shone softly through a filmy muslin covering.

I sat up regarding her; very lissom and soft and lovely she looked, and my whole brain swam suddenly with delight.

Surely I could not part with her!  She was precious to me in that madness that comes over us at such moments.