"'There was a young Princess of Smyrna, Of love I endeavored to learn her, But her father in hate cleft a seam through my pate, Now wasn't that the deuce of a turn-a?'" Precipitately and without the slightest warning he plunged down into a chair and began to whimper maudlinly while with one uncertain finger tip he traced and retraced the twitching, zig-zagged scar. "It--it isn't nice, is it?" he babbled idiotically. "And I was such a pretty boy? . . . Ladies shouldn't ask such questions," he babbled. "Not just as you're going to kiss 'em. It--it makes dead faces floating between! It--isn't nice! Oh, Daphne darling--darling----" But with a little scream of release Daphne's hand was already on the door knob. "Oh, come quick, Old-Dad!" she cried. "It's _all over_! It's all canceled! He's broken _his_ promise! He's----" [219] In a single bound her father was at her side. "Oh, I hope I haven't said anything that I shouldn't have!" babbled Kaire. With a desperate effort he struggled to his feet and raised his arms after the manner of one who is just about to lead a cheer. "Now, all together, ladies and gentlemen!" he cried. "There was a young lady from Smyrna, Of--of Smyrna----" Across his flaccid mouth the odd little smile tightened suddenly in a single poignant flash of bewilderment and pain. "Oh, you Little Good Works Business!" he grinned. "You--you----" Then, before their startled eyes, he pitched over headlong on the table, gave a queer twitch of his shoulders, and lay very quiet, with a little flush of blood spreading redder and redder from his lips. But before Jaffrey Bretton could snatch Daphne from the sight, her overtaxed brain had collapsed into delirium. Dodging down the narrow passageway with the dreadful [220] little burden in his arms he stumbled almost immediately on Martha's crouching figure. "Martha!" he cried. "There's something redder than curtains in the cabin back there! Run and get Kaire's man!" "Kaire's _man_?" scoffed the woman shrilly. Robbed in that single instant of all her inhibition she turned and sped madly for the reddest thing that she would ever know, every thought in her awakened brain, every flash of her jeweled hands keyed suddenly to service. Close behind her a cabin boy came hurrying. Champagne and crystal glasses were on his tray. Roused from a half-completed nap Kaire's man came running to the scene. Like an old hound scenting disaster Lost Man himself loomed unexpectedly in the doorway. With his great tunic-swathed height, his sharply dilating nostrils, he seemed bristling suddenly with some strange new sort of authority. For a single instant his beetling brows glowered to the stark, startled faces around him. Then out of--God knows what stained-glass memories--out of God knows [221] what chanceled associations he burst forth resonantly into the opening lines of the Episcopal burial service.