“Pleasant dreams to ‘ee, sir:  an’ two knacks ’pon the floor ef I be wanted.  Good-night, sir.”  And with this he was gone.

Mr. Fogo stood for some moments listening to his footsteps as they shuffled down the stairs.  Then with a sigh he turned to his writing-case, pulled a straw-bottomed chair before the rickety table, and sat for a while, pen in hand, pondering.

Before he had finished, his candle was low in its socket, and the floor around him littered with scraps of torn paper.  He sealed the envelope, blew out the candle, and stepped to the window.

“I wonder if she has changed,” he said to himself.

Outside, the summer moon had risen above the hill facing him, and the near half of the creek was ablaze with silver.  The old schooner still lay in shadow, but the water rushing from her hold kept a perpetual music.  Other sounds there were none but the soft rustling of the swallows in the eaves overhead, the sucking of the tide upon the beach below, and the whisper of night among the elms.  The air was heavy with the fragrance of climbing roses and all the scents of the garden.  In such an hour Nature is half sad and wholly tender.

Mr. Fogo lit a pipe, and, watching its fumes as they curled out upon the laden night, fell into a kingly melancholy.  He dwelt on his past, but without resentment; on Tamsin, but with less trouble of heart.  After all, what did it matter?  Mr. Fogo, leaning forward on the window-seat, came to a conclusion to which others have been led before him—­that life is a small thing.  Oddly enough, this discovery, though it belittled his fellowmen considerably, did not belittle the thinker at all, or rather affected him with a very sublime humility.

“When one thinks,” said he, “that the moon will probably rise ten million times over the hill yonder on such a night as this, it strikes one that woman-hating is petty, not to say a trifle fatuous.”

He puffed awhile in silence, and then went on—­

“The strange part of it is, that the argument does not seem to affect Tamsin as much as I should have fancied.”

He paused for a moment, and added: 

“Or to prove as conclusively as I should expect that I am a fool.  Possibly if I see Geraldine to-morrow, she will prove it more satis—­”

He broke off to clutch the lattice, and stare with rigid eyes across the creek.

For the moon was by this time high enough to fling a ray upon the deserted hull:  and there—­upon the deck—­stood a figure—­the figure of a woman.

She was motionless, and leant against the bulwarks, with her face towards him, but in black shadow.  A dark hood covered her head; but the cloak was flung back, and revealed just a gleam of white where her bosom and shoulders bent forward over the schooner’s side.

Mr. Fogo’s heart gave a leap, stood still, and then fell to beating with frantic speed.  He craned out at the window, straining his eyes.  At the same moment the pipe dropped from his lips and tumbled, scattering a shower of sparks, into the rose-bush below.