“I don’t know,” I said.  “It is just that my courage is all gone—­I can’t face things.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know—­I’ve lost my grip, Porter.”

And then he asked a question.  “Is it because of Barry, Mary?”

“Some of it.”

“And the rest?”

“I can’t tell you.”

We walked for a long time after that, and I was holding all the time tight to his arm—­for it wasn’t easy to walk with that sea on—­when suddenly he laid his hand over mine.

“Mary,” he said, “I’ve got to tell you.  I can’t keep it back and feel—­honest.  I don’t know whether you want Roger Poole in your life—­I don’t know whether you care.  But I want you to be happy.  And it was I who sent him away from you.”

And now, Roger Poole, what can I say?  What can any woman say?  I only know this, that as I write this the sun shines over a blue sea, and that the world is—­different.  There are still things in my heart which hurt—­but there are things, too, which make it sing!

MARY.

When Mary Ballard came on deck on the morning after the storm, everybody stared.  Where was the girl of yesterday—­the frail white girl who had moped so listlessly in her chair, scribbling on little bits of paper?  Here was a fair young beauty, with her head up, a clear light shining in her gray eyes—­a faint flush on her cheeks.

Colin Quale, meeting her, flickered his lashes and smiled:  “Is this what the storm did to you?”

“What?”

“This and this.”  He touched his cheeks and his eyes.  “To-day, if I painted you, I should have to put pink on my palette—­yesterday I should have needed only black and white.”

Mary smiled back at him.  “Do you interpret things always through the medium of your brush?”

“Why not?  Life is just that—­a little color more or less, and it all depends on the hand of the artist.”

“What a wonderful palette He has!” Her eyes swept the sea and the sky.  “This morning the world is all gold and blue.”

“And yesterday it was gray.”

Mary flashed a glance at him.  His voice had changed.  Delilah was coming toward them.  “There’s material I like to work with,” he said, “there’s something more than paint or canvas—­living, breathing beauty.”

“He’s saying things about you,” Mary said, as Delilah joined them.

Delilah, coloring faintly, cast down her eyes.  “I’m afraid of him, Mary,” she said.

Colin laughed.  “You’re not afraid of any one.”

“Yes, I am.  You analyze my mental processes in such a weird fashion.  You are always reading me like a book.”

“A most interesting book,” Colin’s lashes quivered, “with lovely illustrations.”

They laughed, and swept away into a brisk walk, followed by curious eyes.

If to others Mary’s radiance seemed a miracle of returning health, to Porter Bigelow it was no miracle.  Nothing could have more completely rung the knell of his hopes than this radiance.