“I would like to tell you everything, Wallie. I could n't in the other room. Unity, poor child, knows nothing at all about things. Naturally. I had been worried all the afternoon. I thought I saw her--you know--hanging about outside the office. It was just before I met you at the club. I did n't tell you,--perhaps I ought to,--but that was why I was so upset. But you 'll forgive me. You 've always forgiven me. Anyway, I thought I saw her. It was just a flash, for she, if it was she, was swallowed up in the traffic of Fleet Street. After leaving the club, I went back to the office--verification in proofs of something in Baxter's article. I found odds and ends to do. Then I went home, and Julia's letter lay on my table. I've been off my head of late, Wallie. For the matter of that, I'm still off it. I've hardly slept for weeks. I found Julia's letter. I looked at my watch. There was just time to catch the 7:15. I ran out, jumped into a taxi, and caught it just as it was starting. But as I passed by a third-class carriage,--in fact, I realized it only after I had gone several yards beyond; one rushes, you know,--I seemed to see her face--those thin lips and cold eyes--framed in the window. The guard pitched me into a carriage. I looked out for her at all the stations. At Tring Bay the usual crowd got out. I did n't see her. No one like her got out at Southcliff. What 's the matter, Wallie?” He broke off suddenly. “Nothing, man; nothing,” said Herold, turning away and fumbling for his cigarette-case. “You looked as if you had seen a ghost. It was I who saw the ghost.” He laughed. And the laugh, coming from the haggard face below the brow-reaching white bandage, was horrible. “Your brain was playing you tricks,” said Herold. “You got to Southcliff. What happened?” “I felt a fool,” said John. “Can't you see what a fool a man feels when he knows he has played the fool?” Bit by bit he revealed himself. At the gate of the Channel House he reflected. He had not the courage to enter. Stella would be up and about. He resolved to wait until she went to bed. He wandered down to the beach. The rain began to fall, fine, almost imperceptible. The beacon-light in the west window threw a vanishing shaft into the darkness. “We saw it once--don't you remember?--years ago when you gave her the name--Stellamaris. I sat like a fool and watched the window. How long I don't know. My God! Wallie, you don't know what it is to be shaken and racked by the want of a woman--” “By love for a woman, you mean,” said Herold. “It 's the same thing. At last I saw her. She stood defiant in the light. She had changed. I cried out toward her like an idiot,”--the rugged, grim half face visible beneath the bandage was grotesque, a parody of passion,--“and I stayed there, watching, after she had gone away. How long I don't know. It was impossible to ring at the door and see Oliver and Julia.”