Fleury smiled at him. The face was large and mild, not a fighter’s face nor a coward’s either.... The young woman appeared with the child. She seemed to hold it to the sun, and she walked with the beauty of a woman bringing a pitcher to the fountain. Bellair realised the heat of the day. Her face had an intense clearness, but was partly turned away. There was a delicacy about it that he had not known before. He recalled that she had just bowed to them.... They were passing an island shore--a line of sun-dazzle that stung the eyes, empty green hills and a fierce white sky. Bellair thought of the woman and the island as one ... he, the third, coming home, mooring his boat, hastening up the trail at evening.... Her frail back, bending a little to the right, made him think of a dancer he had once seen. He saw the child’s bare limbs in the sun.... His steps were quickened up that Island trail again.... The _Jade_ seemed fainting in the cushions of hot wind. Just then a voice said: “She’s quite the most remarkable woman. She isn’t a talker.” He had forgotten Fleury. “Where is she going?” “Auckland. She came from there.” “Queer, she would go home this way----” “Her whole fortune is in her arms,” Fleury whispered. The ship’s bell struck twice; the cane-chair creaked; they turned by habit to note the appearance of the Japanese woman with drink. She did not fail. Stackhouse came to with a prolonged snore, a sound unlike a pair of pit-terriers at work. “A considerable brute,” muttered the preacher. “He has been much of a man in his way,” said Bellair. “He talks much--that is weakness.” Their eyes met. Bellair began to understand how deeply the other’s experience had bitten him. “He’s afraid of death,” Fleury added. “I wonder,” Bellair mused. “He talks always of death. He’s been in at the deaths of many men. He’ll die hard himself--if he doesn’t tame down.” Fleury added: “When a man is so much an animal, all his consciousness is in that. They see death as the end--that’s why they are afraid----” “I wonder if he is a coward?” Bellair questioned. “The stuff animals are made of cannot last,” the preacher concluded. Bellair pondered as he sat with Stackhouse that night. Brandy was the choice of the evening. The Japanese woman brought it from the deeps of the hold, where it had come in stone from Bruges. Bellair joined him a second and a third time for the instant stinging zest of the fire.... Fleury and the woman had long stood together aft by the clicking log. The moon came late and bulbous. Stackhouse talked of his fortune, and the chaos in many island affairs his death would cause.... Once he had loved a chap named Belding, and would have left him great riches, but Belding was dead.... 3