“But I want to write now. I am so suddenly happy. I have been longing and longing to see you. And when you come you bring this wonderful news.” Near at hand the gulls were crying, and sampan men crooning to themselves as they rocked their bodies over their stern oars. “Come and tell me about England,” he said; “the Thames, the bridges, the lights, the trains; and pictures and music, and books and plays, and carpets and rugs; and little narrow country lanes, and hills, and being free, and----” “But I can’t tell you everything at once!” “Oh, splendid!” he exclaimed. “I guessed you would say that. I have guessed it every night for weeks and weeks. ‘But I can’t tell you everything at once!’ Now it’s coming true. You see,” he explained, “I have been looking forward to this.” A tremor of joy passed through her because she had made him happy. She began to talk eagerly, so that, for a time at least, he might forget the ship, and might not remember, what she understood now, that “for weeks and weeks” there had been nothing but this meeting to which he might look forward. From the bridge of the _Pathshire_ Nick Ordith was surveying the shore through a telescope. “Dull spot, Yeoman,” he said. The Yeoman of Signals rubbed his hands. “Precious cold in the winter, sir.” IV John returned to the ship in a spirit of exultation, intoxicated, not so much by the heady wine of praise as by the discovery that he was not altogether alone in his difficult world. Margaret cared what became of him; apparently Mr. Alter also cared. But it was Margaret’s interest and her personality that filled his thoughts to the exclusion of the colder critic. He sought out Hartington, and laid the matter before him, reading aloud Mr. Alter’s letter, and repeating the passages in it which seemed to him unusually important. “DEAR LYNWOOD, “_I am sending this letter by Margaret lest it follow you from sea to sea. If she does not meet you at once, she can at least discover your whereabouts.