“Well, not now, maybe.  Not this month, or even this year, perhaps, but some day—­”

“No, Nat.  You must listen.  There’s no use of this goin’ on any longer.  I mean it.  I can’t marry you.”

“You won’t, you mean.”

“Well, if you wish to think so.  Then I won’t.”

“But by and by—­”

“No, not by and by.  Never, Nat.  Never.”

He drew his hand across his forehead.

“Never!” he repeated, more to himself than to her.

“Never.  Yes, Nat.”

“Then, by the everlastin’!  I’ll do somethin’—­”

“No, no, you won’t.  Nat Hammond, I know you.  You’re a great big, brave-hearted, sensible man.  You won’t be foolish.  You’ll do—­yes, I think you’d better do just what your father asks you to do.  Marry Grace, if she wants you and will have you.  She’ll make you a good wife; you’ll learn to care for her, and I know she’ll have the best husband that a girl could hope for.  And you and I will be friends, just as we’ve always been, and—­”

“Keziah, stop that!  Stop it, do you hear!  I don’t want to listen to such stuff.  I tell you I’m past soft soap, and I didn’t think you’d give it to me.”

“Nat!”

“Oh, yes, ‘Nat’!  A lot you care for ‘Nat’!  Not a reason on God’s footstool why you won’t have me—­except one, and that one that you don’t want me.”

“Please, Nat!  I can hardly believe this is you.  This trouble with your father has upset you.  You don’t mean what you say.  You’re not talkin’ like yourself and—­”

“Stop it, I tell you.  I don’t feel like myself.  I banked on you, Keziah.  I’ve lived for you.  And now—­O Keziah, take it back!  Give me a little hope, just enough to keep my head above water.”

“I’d like to, Nat.  I only wish I could.  But ’twouldn’t be any use.  I can’t do it.”

He snatched his hat from the table and strode to the door.  Turning, he looked at her.

“All right,” he said chokingly.  “All right.  Good-by.”

His steps sounded on the oilcloth of the kitchen.  Then the back door slammed.  He was gone.

Keziah started, as if the slam of the door had been an electric shock.  During the interview she had been pale and grave but outwardly calm.  Now she sank wearily down in the chair from which she had risen and her head dropped forward upon her arms on the table.  The letter she had been reading before Captain Nat’s arrival fell from her waist to the floor and lay there, its badly spelled and blotted lines showing black and fateful against the white paper.  And she cried, tears of utter loneliness and despair.

The clouds thickened as the afternoon passed.  The setting sun was hidden behind them; over the horizon of ocean and bay the fog banks were rolling in tumbled, crumpled masses.  The shadows in the lonely sitting room deepened.  There came a knock at the dining-room door.

Keziah sprang from her chair, smoothed her hair, hastily wiped her eyes, picked up the dropped letter and went to admit the visitor, whoever he or she might be.  She was glad of the shadows, they prevented her face from being seen too plainly.