"Well, Harry," said Miss Dobbs, breaking suddenly upon a whirl of rather terrifying thoughts, "why didn't you come last Sunday?" He was in a state of mental chaos, therefore to attempt to answer the question was useless. "Why didn't oo, Harry?" Miss Dobbs suddenly felt that it was a case for _force majeure_. Very unexpectedly she flung her arms round his neck. Risking the rickety cane chair she sat heavily upon his knee, yet not so heavily as she might have done, and with a she-leopard's tenderness drew his head to her ample bosom. A thrill of repugnance passed through Henry Harper, yet he was so fully engaged with a very pressing problem as hardly to know that it had. "Kiss your Cora, Harry." But his Cora kissed Harry instead. And as she did so, the unfailing instinct given to woman told her that that kiss was a mistake. In the next instant, the fat arms had disengaged themselves from the young man's neck, and Miss Dobbs had slipped from his knee and was standing looking at him. Her gesture was striking and picturesque; also she had the air of a tragedy queen. "Harry," she said, with a catch in her voice, "you are breaking my heart." The Sailor had already been informed of that. He had tried not to believe it, but facts were growing too strong for him. A superb tear was in the eyes of Miss Dobbs. The sight of it thrilled and startled him. Twice before in his life had he seen tears in the eyes of a woman, and with his abnormal power of memory he vividly recalled each occasion now. The first time was in the eyes of Mother, the true woman he would always reverence, when she took off his clothes after his first flight from Blackhampton, and put him into a bath; the second time was in the eyes of Miss Foldal, and she also was a true woman whose memory he would always honor, when she said good-bye on the night of the second departure from the city of his birth. But the tears in the eyes of Mother and Miss Foldal were not as the superb and terrible tear in the eye of Miss Cora Dobbs. "Don't think I blame you, Harry," said that lady with a Jocasta-like note, trying to keep the bitterness out of her tone. "I'm only a lonely and unprotected girl who will soon be on the shelf, but that's no fault of yours. Yet, somehow, I thought you were different. Somehow, I thought you was a gentleman." Miss Dobbs had no illusions on that point, but she well knew where the shoe was going to pinch.