Susan Jenks, coming up, found Mary with the little cat in her lap.

“Oh, honey child, don’t cry like that.”

“Oh, Susan, Susan, it will never be the same again, never the same.”

And now once more in the garden, the roses bloomed on the hundred-leaved bush, once more the fountain sang, and the little bronze boy laughed through a veil of mist—­but there were no gay voices in the garden, no lovers on the stone seat.  Susan Jenks kept the paths trim and watered the flowers, and Pittiwitz chased butterflies or stretched herself in the sun, lazily content, forgetting, gradually, those who had for a time made up her world.

But Mary, on the high seas, could not forget what she had left behind.  It was not Susan Jenks, it was not Pittiwitz, it was not the garden which called her back, although these had their part in her regrets—­it was the old life, the life which had belonged to her childhood and her girlhood the life which had been lived with her mother and father and Constance—­and Barry.

As she lay listless in her deck chair, she could see nothing in her future which would match the happiness of the past.  The days lived in the old house had never been days of great prosperity; her father had, indeed, often been weighed down with care—­there had been times of heavy anxieties—­but, there had been between them all the bond of deep affection, of mutual dependence.

In Gordon’s home there would be splendors far beyond any she had known, there would be ease and luxury, and these would be shared with her freely and ungrudgingly, yet to a nature like Mary Ballard’s such things meant little.  The real things in life to her were love and achievement; all else seemed stale and unprofitable.

Of course there would be Constance and the baby.  On the hope of seeing them she lived.  Yet in a sense Gordon and the baby stood between herself and Constance—­they absorbed her sister, satisfied her, so that Mary’s love was only one drop added to a full cup.

It was while she pondered over her future that Mary was moved to write to Roger Poole.  The mere putting of her thoughts on paper would ease her loneliness.  She would say what she felt, frankly, freely, and when the little letters were finished, if her mood changed she need not send them.

So she began to scribble, setting down each day the thoughts which clamored for expression.

Porter complained that now she was always writing.

“I’d rather write than talk,” Mary said, wearily; and at last he let the matter drop.

In Mid-Sea.

DEAR FRIEND O’ MINE: 

You asked me to write, and you will think that I have more than kept my promise when you get this journal of our days at sea.  But it has seemed to me that you might enjoy it all, just as if you were with us, instead of down among your sand-hills, with your sad children (are they really sad now?) and Cousin Patty’s wedding cakes.