"We met in London, at a place of popular entertainment, and our acquaintance was, judged by the standards of conventionality, perhaps slender." The Indiarubber Man paused and looked gravely from face to face. "However," he continued, "encouraged by my frank open countenance and sympathetic manner, she was constrained to tell the story of how she once loved and lost...." The narrator broke off and appeared to have forgotten how the story went on, in dreamy contemplation of his cigarette. The mess waited in silence: at length the Junior Watch-keeper could bear it no longer. "What _did_ she tell you?" The Indiarubber Man thoughtfully exhaled a cloud of smoke. "She said: ’Pa shot ’im.... Sniff!—_’Ow_ I loved ’im.... Sniff!—Lor’, ’ow ’e did bleed.’ ..." *XXV.* *WHY THE GUNNER WENT ASHORE.* The evening mail had come, and Selby sat alone in his cabin mechanically reading and re-reading a letter. Finally he tore it up into very small pieces and held them clenched in his hand, staring very hard at nothing in particular. He was engaged to be married: or to be more precise, he had been engaged. The letter that had come by the evening mail said that this was not so any longer. The girl who wrote it was a very straight-forward person who hated concealment of facts because they were unpleasant. It had become necessary to tell Selby that she couldn’t love him any longer, and, faith, she had told him. Further, by her creed, it was only right that she should tell him about Someone Else as well. It was all very painful, and the necessity for thus putting things to Selby in their proper light, had cost her sleepless nights, red eyes, and much expensive notepaper, before the letter was finally posted. But she did hope he would realise it was For the Best, ... and some day he would be so thankful.... It had all been a Big Mistake, because she wasn’t a bit what he thought, ... and so forth. A very distressing letter to have to write, and, from Selby’s point of view, even more distressing to have to read. Few men enjoy being brought up against their limitations thus abruptly, especially where Women and Love are concerned. In Selby’s case was added the knowledge that another had been given what he couldn’t hold. He had made a woman love him, but he couldn’t make her go on loving him.... He was insufficient unto the day. Critics with less biassed judgment might have taken a different point of view: might have said she was a jilt, or held she acted a little cruelly: gone further, even, and opined he was well out of it. But Selby was one of those who walk the earth under a ban of idealism and had never been seriously in love before. She was the Queen who could do no wrong. It was he who had been weighed and found wanting. If only he had acted differently on such and such an occasion. If, in short, instead of being himself he had been somebody quite different all along....