Walking slowly home, the stars, very high above him, were like a powdering of dry, luminous snow on the polished night. The cold was so intense that his exposed face ached. What an odorous heat there would be over the mooring at the Prince’s Ghat in Calcutta! He remembered the firm, light pressure of the northeast trades, the perpetual fleecy trades clouds about the horizon, the bonitos and albacore in the deeply blue, sunny water. Lovely sailing. Was it true that all that, for him, was already a thing of the past? Epes couldn’t believe it, and yet--what other conclusion was possible? Turning his thoughts to the past hour with Annice he tried, in her, to find a recompense for what he was losing, but without success. He was proud of her; in her way she was fine and beautiful. Perhaps what he understood love to be came later; it might be unreasonable to expect the whole measure of joy at once. Annice was cool enough; indeed they had acted as though they had been married for a year or more, as though they had been continuously together instead of having been so lately separated by the diameter of the world. There was a light in the small room at the rear of the hall, used by his father as an office; and as he laid aside his wraps the elder appeared in the doorway, obviously desiring speech. “I have seen Mr. Dove,” Ira Calef told his son; “and he corroborates your report, with some added praise. I am very well pleased, Epes. Your conduct this evening, too, was admirable. I did not quite expect, at once, such a full comprehension of my intentions. The fact is,” he proceeded in a general discursive manner, “that the country is changing very rapidly. A great many men are blind to this, and as a result they will have to suffer. It is not so with me. The days of the colony are at last definitely at an end; from now on not adventure but finance will be the ruling spirit. That is one of the reasons why I am withdrawing you from the sea. Let other paid men--good men, but essentially subordinate--undertake the gales and half gales; it is important for you, a Calef, to be at the center of affairs and safe.” Epes’ expression was dull, unrevealing; everything that was being said contradicted and outraged his every fiber. Safe! Good men, but subordinate! He longed to shout--for all sailors, before and aft the mast--a contradiction of his father’s cold patronizing periods. He loathed the money sharks who on land, in houses, traded on the courage and endurance and fidelity of ships’ masters and crews. If Ira Calef was right, and they had grown unimportant, if their greatness was doomed to vanish--why, then he wanted to go too.