"A mariner has got to have a star to work by. Even old Ulysses had to have that. But there's not one for Henry Harper in all the firmament." He fell into a sudden, odd, and queer kind of rage. "It's a black shame. If only I'd had a fair chance I'd have put this thing through. You might say"--the harsh laugh jarred worse than the baffled anger--"I'm a chap who has been handicapped out of the race. However..." The Sailor became silent. Ambrose felt himself to be shaken. The impotent fury of this elemental soul was something beyond his experience. He hardened his heart. It must be his task to anchor this derelict adrift in uncharted seas until such time as help could come to him. "Henry," he said suddenly, "does Mary Pridmore know you have returned?" "No." Edward Ambrose mustered his courage. "If you don't bring the mariner into port it will be a heavy blow for her." "What has it to do with her?" was the almost savage reply. "She believes in you." "Why should she?" There was almost a note of menace. "She is your friend. We are both your friends." The quiet tone somehow prevailed. "Of course," he said queerly, "you are both my friends. And I'm not worthy of either." "Suppose we leave her to be the judge of that." The Sailor shook his head. "She can't judge anything until ... until I've told her ... about Cora." "She has not been told?" Ambrose spoke casually, impassively. Somehow he had allowed himself to guess that the Sailor had told her, and that she had sent him away. Why he should have come to that rather fantastic conclusion he didn't know, except that she had not had a line from Henry Harper in eleven months. But he saw at once that he was wrong. He felt that he must use great care. The ice was even thinner than he had suspected. Moreover an acute perception told him that nothing would be easier than for ill informed well-meaningness to commit a tragic blunder. "You don't mean to say you thought I had?" The Sailor put his question oddly, disconnectedly. "The fact is," said Edward Ambrose jesuitically, "I have never been impertinent enough to think the matter out. I know nothing beyond the fact that Mary Pridmore is very much your friend." "There's no use in saying that when I can never be hers." "Ah, there I don't agree," said Edward Ambrose calmly. "Why not look the facts in the face?" "Yes, why not?" "Friendship between us is impossible. That's why I went away. We ... we played it up too high. Friendship between a man and a woman is no use ... at least not to her and me ... although..." "I'm not talking merely of friendship," said Edward Ambrose, very deliberately. "I'm talking of something else." So charged with meaning were the words that the Sailor recoiled as if he had received a blow. "What ... what are you saying!" he cried with a sudden blind rage in his face. BOOK V FULFILLMENT I "Why do you taunt me?" cried the Sailor after a pause hard to endure.