I glanced at the volume of Marine Law he had tossed to me. It was _Gibbon's_ DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE! Monsieur's beard began to twitch curiously. I thought at first he was really intending to make the best of things, but suddenly two great tears squeezed from his eyes and rolled lumberingly over his cheeks; then, as an unbridled torrential storm breaks in the tropics, he threw himself face down upon the cushions and wept--piteously. Tommy and I were thunderstruck. It gives one a weird feeling to see a man shaken with grief. I was helpless and, there's no denying it, just a little remorseful. As quick in sympathy as he was in resource, Tommy crossed and put a hand on the old fellow's shoulder, saying gently: "Buck up, Professor. This kind of thing won't do, you know!" Then my surprise was most complete. Sitting now, face buried in his hands, he brokenly told a story that at times brought tears to our own eyes. When he finished I had visualized a scene begun more than thirty years ago in the Royal Palace of Azuria: an honorable young doctor, Court physician, voluntarily surrendering his appointment because he loved the King's younger daughter--Doloria's aunt; the old ruler's searching eyes that sympathized even while they censured--the aged hand that pressed with understanding even while it took the proffered resignation. Then the young doctor's quick departure; his plunge into the Universities, trusting absorption of the sciences to act as a panacea for his grief. Years later his return to Azuria; their pure love still burning, though unexpressed. At last the kidnaping; the quick preparations for pursuit; and finally the girl, herself, sweet with many confessions, bringing in her own hands the old King's "authority"--this paper before us--which commanded him to return the little Princess by any means he could, his reward being the fulfillment of his heart's desire. "And now," he moaned, rocking to and fro, "after seventeen years of searching, I have won only to lose!" Truly, I was touched. Tommy turned quickly away and blinked at the horizon. Yet neither of us knew that all of this time Doloria had been standing in the companionway door. She now crossed swiftly and sat by the weeping man, impulsively drawing his grizzled head to her shoulder as a mother might have comforted a hurt child. But toward me her face was turned, and I saw that her startled eyes spoke into mine the entreating message which distracted her--telling me that we must acknowledge this claim of Monsieur's poor heart before our own could ever be happy; asking me what to do, since his title to happiness came first. Yet all that her lips spoke was the trembling whisper: "Oh, Jack!" But he, with a new determination, sat quickly upright. The warmth of a woman's sympathetic arms upon a life that had been without comfort, the quick intuition that she was pleading for him at a great cost to herself, stirred the fineness of his nature, and he cried: