The ride home from Belleport was a subdued one, bringing to an afternoon that had been rich in sunshine a climax of shadow. The Galbraiths were far too stunned by the startling revelations of the day to wish to prolong a meeting that had lapsed into awkwardness, and until they had had opportunity to readjust themselves they were eager to be alone; nor did their delicacy of perception fail to detect a similar craving in the minds of their guests. Therefore they did not press their visitors to remain and tactfully arranged that one of the servants instead of Roger should drive the Spences back over the Harbor Road. As the motor purred its way along, there was little conversation. Even had not the chauffeur's presence acted as a restraint, none of the party would have had the heart to make perfunctory conversation; the tragedy of the moment had touched them too deeply. What a strange, wonderful unraveling of life's tangled skeins had come with the few fleeting hours. Each turned the drama over in his mind, trying to make a reality of it and spin into the warp and woof of the tapestry time had already woven this thread of new color. But so startling was it in hue that it refused to blend, standing out against the duller tones of the past with appalling distinctness; and never was it more irreconcilable than when the familiar confines of the little fishing hamlet by the sea were reached and those who struggled to harmonize it saw it in contrast with this background of simplicity. Each silently reconstructed Delight's life, now linking it with its ancestry and its romantic beginnings. She had, then, sprung from aristocratic stock; riches had been her right, and culture her heritage. She had been the single flower of a passionate love, and the hot-headed young father to whom she had been bequeathed when bereft of the woman he had adored had taken her with him when he had sought the sea's balm to assuage his sorrow. She was all that remained of that tender, throbbing memory of his youth. Where he went she followed, all unconscious of peril and with youth's God-given faith; and when the great moment came and the supreme sacrifice was demanded, the man voluntarily severed the bonds that bound them, leaving her to life while he himself went forth into the Beyond. What must not that heroic soul have suffered when he cast his child into the ocean's arms and upon the mercies of an unknown future! What blind trust led him; what unselfishness and courage lay in the choice he made! A smaller mind would have followed the easier path and kept them united to the end, happy in the thought that in their death they were not divided, and that no years stretched ahead when she would be without his protection. Might he not be performing a kinder act to let her go down into the sea than to entrust her to the charity of strangers? He must have wrestled with all these problems and temptations as he stood lashed to the mast out there in the fateful storm.