“There was a moment that I should have asked her to take the Gleam from me--had I been able to speak. It was such a moment that I had run out under the stars. But as I patted the tiny shoulder, the burden of the ecstasy passed, and a durable blessedness came--the calm of great understanding. “The road--of course it was empty--for he had come.... I thought I had told the old servant, but a second time I seemed to see her anxious face bending so near in the dusk. “‘Why, don’t you see?’ I whispered. ‘He was looking for his mother when I found him.’” * * * * * That was the end of the story--the rest just details that an outsider might ask: How she went away with Paul for the sake of her father; how he remained with her during the long voyage to America, but as nothing to her, more and more a stranger of different ways from hers--how he gave her but a little of the money her father had put in trust for her keeping--and rushed away to dig his grave in the city.... Then just a glimpse of her need and her labour and longing for the Island life--a dream, the _Jade_.... 5 The final morning, Bellair took the babe in his arms and let himself down the rocky way to the shore. The trail was empty behind him, and the cottage shut off by the group of little pines, pure to pass through as the room of a child. And here were rain-washed boulders warming in the morning sun, and before his eyes the blue and deep-eyed sea. It rolled up to his feet, forever changing with its stories and its secrets, very cool about them all to-day, full of mastery and leisure. Bellair sat upon a stone and looked at the child: “I wish you could tell me, little man ... but you are not telling. You know it all, like the sea--but you do not tell.... And I’ll see you so many times, when I’m away,--see you like this and wish many times I could hold you. For we were always friends, good friends. You didn’t ask much.... And you were fine in the pinch, my son.... That little cry I heard, that little cry.... He loved you, and promised great things for you. I’ve come to believe it, little man, for I know your mother. That’s good gambling, from where I stand.... He knew it first. He knew it all first. And you didn’t tell him.... Oh, be all to her, little Gleam--be all to her, and tell her I love her--when she looks away to the sea. Tell her, I’ll be coming, perhaps.... I didn’t know I’d ever be called to kiss a little boy--but it’s all the same to you ... and take care of her for me.”