"However, that's not your job, nor mine, thank God. It would be an eminently suitable recreation for a debonair young man with a shattered reputation, a cast iron stomach, several millions of dollars and no objections to staying up by the year." He turned a little, toward Schuyler. "What are you thinking about?" he queried. "Only the fool." "The generic fool of Kipling, or Young Parmalee?" "I was thinking of Young Parmalee, then." "And the woman?" Schuyler quoted, slowly: "A fool there was--" "Oh, but," Blake protested, "I wouldn't call him a fool." "Why not?" demanded Schuyler. "He was a fool." "Yes," returned Blake. "But he's dead, now." "Bosh," retorted Schuyler, impatiently. "I've no sympathy with that false sentiment that forbids one to speak the unpleasant truth of a dead person. If a man were a fool while alive, his dying doesn't absolve him of his folly. Young Parmalee's death was a mitigating circumstance, however. He killed himself; which shows that he had some manhood left. But he should have had the decency to choose another place for his self destruction." He was silent for a moment; at length he went on: "A man is what he is, and he was what he was. His dying can change nothing of his living." He looked up. His wife and child were coming toward him. "Say nothing to them about all this, Tom," he urged. "Certainly not," acquiesced Blake. A steward came down the deck, calling raucously: "All ashore that's going ashore!" Kathryn turned to Schuyler. "And now that the time has really come to say good-bye," she said, brokenly, "here's something I brought you, Jack." She handed him a little box of glazed cardboard. Wonderingly he took it. "For me?" he cried, with simulated gaiety. "That's sweet of you, dear heart--sweeter, even than are these." For he had opened it, and taken forth the tiny bouquet of forget-me-nots that had nestled in the depths of the moist cotton, "and these are sweetness itself. But why forget-me- nots! As though I could ever forget you, even for one little minute!" There came again the strident call: "All ashore that's going ashor-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-e!!!" Violet eyes suffused, Kathryn was clinging to him. "Jack," she whispered. "Jack, I'm afraid I'm--going--to--cry." With infinite tenderness he held her to him. "There, there, sweetheart mine," he said, soothingly. "Don't be a silly.... Now we'll all go down to the gangway, where the big hugs are.... Then I'll rush back here and we can wave one another good-bye and try to imagine I'm going only over to Staten Island for the afternoon." Came farewells at the gangway--farewells of tears, of heart-aches, of quivering lips and moist lids--of laughter quavering and smiles unreal-- of the good hand clasp that good men know--the touch of wet, clinging lips.