Tourist trade to the Orient had dropped to zero. Passengers aboard were people of importance, outward bound on serious business. Nathan shared his cabin with an International Y. M. C. A. official going to Siberia to open cantonment work among the Russian troops. With his easy ability to “get along” with those of his own sex, he had become intimate with the Y. man before two days had passed. By the end of the week he knew most of the men on board and had talked textiles to a group of South Americans in the smoking room one night so intelligently that one of them had approached him next day declaring his government needed a man of Nathan’s experience and ability, and would Nathan consider a position in Bolivia when his present mission was over. Nathan laughed, shrugging his shoulders. He could not help feeling as he “held his own” among those of his own sex, that they minded little the talon aspect of his gnarled hands or his mutilated ear. That for Bernie! It was what a man was in his head and his heart which counted most. He began to get a perspective on himself. Yet he hungered. He hardly spoke to a woman throughout the voyage. But this was true: for the first time in his life Nathan had day after day to dream,—to do absolutely nothing but think. He tried to assay his mental equipment in those long, lazy days of meditation, to determine what he was best fitted to do, how to make up for lost years, whether he should go on as a salesman and make textiles his business after his return and now that he was free,—or specialize in some profession or art. His poetry? He had long ago seen enough of life to realize it would be a dreary day before he could hope to secure a living from poetry. Well enough as a hobby, perhaps. But life meant more than compilation of romantic rhymes. He felt it too late now to go to college. But it was never too late to educate himself for some profession or art. Just what should that education be? To what purpose? What did he enjoy doing best, aside from composing rhymes? Of what could he make a success because his heart would be in his work? One night, as the great liner swung down the northern border of tropical seas, he leaned over the railing and watched the soft, warm stars. One star in particular was very luminous and close. A snatch of an old poem came to him—— “Sometimes, dear heart, in the quiet night, When the stars hang soft and low, I slip away from the clash and care To the Hills of Long Ago. Across those hills in the whisp’ring dark, With the night-breeze sighing through, I see those castles we’d planned to build When our dreams had all come true!” The lines brought the tropic skies close. Nat’s heart sang in rhythm with the swash of the water and beat of the screw. Who was the one with whom he had built castles—Bernie? Carol? Mildred? Who?