They left the store together, and, as was his wont with favored customers, Li Sin saw them to the door. The girl was flushed deep with mortification, and she shot the Manchu a mute appeal of apology. Dreghorn smiled again. "_Au revoir_, my poetical friend," he laughed. "Good-by!" answered Li Sin, gravely. Li Sin saw little of Irene Johns for the next six weeks. Once she came into the store, but she was nervous and flushed, as though she thought the Manchu would hold against her the insults Dreghorn had offered him. But he took pains to show her that he and she were as close friends as ever. She was silently grateful, but still nervous. "Mr. Dreghorn will be back in six months?" the Manchu said. "In six months," she answered listlessly. "He is gone to Abyssinia." "And you will be married soon after?" "Immediately he comes back, he insists," she said. The glamour and hypnotism and force of the man's presence no longer enthralled her, Li Sin could see. She was fearful of the step she was taking. But she was certain it was going to take place. Once Dreghorn returned, the quality of his masterfulness would grind down all opposition, even were she to show any. "I want you to come in soon," Li Sin told her. "I have some things coming from Peking that I want you to see." But she did not come in. In place of her there entered the store, six weeks after Dreghorn had sailed, a tall, heavily built young man with a tanned face, heavy jaw, and gray eyes. He asked for Mr. Sin. "I am Li Sin," the Manchu told him. "My name is Gray, surgeon on the Cunarder Hibernia, between New York and Algiers. Miss Johns asked me to tell you something, and she would like to see you, if it is not asking too much. She is prostrated at home. Her fiancé is dead." "Mr. Dreghorn is dead!" Li Sin commented simply. "How?" "He came out of the smoking-room one night, after talking to me about his intended," the surgeon went on glibly. He seemed to be repeating something he had rehearsed. "We were off Algiers, and though the night was fine, a cross-sea was running. He said he would not turn in for a half-hour yet, and the last I saw of him he was leaning against the starboard rail of the boat-deck. We never saw anything more of him. There can be no doubt that he fell overboard." Li Sin studied him for a few minutes silently. "Dr. Gray," he said simply, "you will pardon a man who is twenty years older than you, and who has seen much of the world and much of life, but--that is not what happened. Dr. Gray, how did Dreghorn die?" He continued looking at the young surgeon. The man was evidently under a great strain. "I know Miss Johns," Li Sin went on, "and I knew Dreghorn." "If you know Miss Johns," the young surgeon blurted out suddenly, "you know the best and most beautiful woman I have ever seen; and if you knew Dreghorn, you knew the damnedest scoundrel unhanged." "That, too, I know," said Li Sin.