These gorgeous beings with their kingliness of mien, these children of the sun who spoke with the accent of the gods meant much more to the primitive soul of Henry Harper than as yet it could understand. In the intoxication of the hour, with the sun and the birds, the trees, the green earth, the bright flowers paying their homage to the grace and beauty of his countrywomen, he felt like an angel who has fallen out of heaven, who after aeons of time in a bottomless hell is permitted to see again a fair heritage that once was his. The genie had unlocked another door. Henry Harper was now in a world of romance. In order to know what these wonderful beings truly were he listened eagerly for fragments of their talk as they passed by. All of a sudden there came miraculously a voice that had a tang of ocean in it. There and then was he flung out of Hyde Park to the deck of the _Margaret Carey_. Leaping at the sound of a laugh, a full-chested music the Sailor could never forget, he saw, a few yards off, the oncoming figures of a man and a girl. Both were tall and young and splendid; both seemed to be dressed in the last cry of fashion. Moreover they bore themselves with the assured grace of a sweet ship under canvas. The pair were clearly brother and sister, and the figure of the man, at least, was extraordinarily familiar to Henry Harper. Yet almost before he had realized them, they were level with him. It was not until they were actually past the seat on which he sat that there came a flash of recognition. The man was Klondyke. For an instant the heart of the Sailor stood still. The immortal had almost touched his knee, yet he was yards away already. But Klondyke it was, laughing his great note and rolling out his rich and peculiar dialect. It was Klondyke in a top hat and a tail coat, looking as if he had come out of a bandbox. Who could believe that such faultless magnificence had been washed habitually out of its berth in the half-deck of the _Margaret Carey_? He did not look a bit older than when the Sailor had seen him last, that unhappy six years ago when his friend shook him by the hand, told him to stick to his reading and writing, and then started to walk across Asia. And in that time Klondyke did not appear to have changed at all. He had the same brown, large-featured face, the same keen and cheerful eye, the same roll in his gait, and that cool, indefinable, you-be-damned air that was both admired and resented aboard the _Margaret Carey_. By the time the Sailor had recovered from his surprise, Klondyke was out of sight. A strong impulse then came upon Henry Harper to go after his friend and declare himself. But a feeling of timidity defeated him. Besides, he understood more fully at this moment than ever before that there were whole continents between such a man as Klondyke and such a man as Henry Harper. VI