“What’s the matter, Ruth?” asked Spurlock, anxiously.

“It has been ... rather a hard day, Hoddy,” Ruth answered.  She was wan and white.

So, after the dinner was over, Spurlock took her home; and worked far into the night.

* * * * *

The general office was an extension of the west wing of the McClintock bungalow.  From one window the beach was always visible; from another, the stores.  Spurlock was invariably at the high desk in the early morning, poring over ledgers, and giving the beach and the stores an occasional glance.  Whenever McClintock had guests, he loafed with them on the west veranda in the morning.

This morning he heard voices—­McClintock’s and the Wastrel’s.

“Sorry,” said McClintock, “but I must ask you to check out this afternoon before five.  I’m having some unexpected guests.”

“Ah!  Sometimes I wonder I don’t run amok and kill someone,” said the Wastrel, in broken English.  “I give you all of my genius, and you say—­’Get out!’ I am some kind of a dog.”

“That is your fault, none of mine.  Without whisky,” went on McClintock, “your irritability is beyond tolerance.  You have said a thousand times that there was no shame in you.  Nobody can trust you.  Nobody can anticipate your next move.  We tolerate you for your genius, that’s a fact.  But underneath this tolerance there is always the vague hope that your manhood will someday reassert itself.”

The Wastrel laughed.  “Did you ever hear me whine?”

“No,” admitted McClintock

“You’ve no objection to my dropping in again later, after your guests go?”

“No.  When I’m alone I don’t mind.”

“Very well.  You won’t mind if I empty this gin?”

“No.  Befuddle yourself, if you want to.”

Silence.

Spurlock mused over the previous night.  After he had eaten dinner with Ruth, he had gone to McClintock’s; and he had heard music such as he had heard only in the great concert halls.  The picturesque scoundrel had the true gift; and Spurlock was filled with pity at the thought of such genius gone to pot.  To use it as a passport to card-tables and gin-bottles!  McClintock wasn’t having any guests; at any rate, he had not mentioned the fact.

Spurlock had sensed what had gone completely over McClintock’s head—­that this was the playing of a soul in damnation.  His own peculiar genius—­a miracle key to the hidden things in men’s souls—­had given him this immediate and astonishing illumination.  As the Wastrel played, Spurlock knew that the man saw the inevitable end—­death by drink; saw the glory of the things he had thrown away, the past, once so full of promise.  And, decently as he could, McClintock was giving the man the boot.

There was, it might be said, a double illumination.  But for Ruth, he, Howard Spurlock, might have ended upon the beach, inescapably damned.  The Dawn Pearl.  After all, the Wastrel was in luck:  he was alone.