“It is killing me!” she cried.

But he did not perceive the meaning of her unguarded cry:  he did not know how it was with her, for he had not yet dreamed how it was with himself.  But he was soon to discover.

Three weeks they had been wafted about from key to key, from bay to bay; they landed and explored the quaint old towns; they made trips into the tropical forests; great boatloads of juicy mangoes and guavas and bananas came off to them; they scattered coins on the clear bottom for the brown babies tumbling about the shores to dive after.  Now at noon they lay anchored in still lagoons under the shadow of an overhanging orange-grove; now at night they were flying across the broad seas.  But Lilian felt she could endure no more of it:  her life was exhausted; she longed for the yacht’s head to be turned northward, that she might die in peace on shore.  John also was impatient to be gone.  If he could have Lilian once more at home, he thought, he would marry her in spite of her protest, and take her where forgetfulness must needs soothe her, and strange faces make her cling to him in the old way.  The way in which she clung to him now was too bitter to be borne.  Her mother also began to think of home, and Mr. Sterling had wearied long ago; and at length, further pretences failing, they had been freshly provisioned and had started on their homeward way.

Reyburn had, indeed, been loath to make any change in their luxurious summering, but he was one of those who slide along with the days.

  Take the goods the gods provide thee: 
  The lovely Thais sits beside thee—­

was a couplet that he was fond of humming, and he always waited for some unnatural wrench to make the effort he should have made himself.  But he had consented at last to the return, because while he was still floating in Southern waters, under Southern skies, with this delicious voice in his ears, this delicious beauty by his side, he could not think that a week’s sailing must bring him under other conditions.

Perhaps, though, it would be more than a week’s sailing, some one said, for the fair wind that had taken them hither and yon so long, and had waited on their fancies, was apparently on the point of deserting them at last, and the yacht was merely drifting before a fitful breeze that lightly moved a scud of low clouds which the sunset had kindled into a blaze of glory hanging just above them, and whose ragged shreds only now and then displayed a star.

“We are going to have nasty weather,” the sailing-master said to his mate.  “The barometer is going down with a rush.”

“Yes, sir,” had come the answer:  “we shall catch it in the mid-watch.”

“Then stow the light sails, Mr. Mason,” the captain said, “and get everything secure for a heavy blow.  Keep a sharp lookout, and call me as soon as the weather changes.”

“All right, sir.”

“I am going down for forty winks,” said the captain.  Then as he passed Mr. Reyburn:  “I don’t much like the appearance of things, sir.”