“When he married the McTodd girl,” Gorham corrected me softly. Then he went on: “His history was that of hundreds of other seafaring men from that time on; dogged, hard work, scanty savings and intervals when he had to tramp the streets in search of a berth. But he managed pretty well. He saved money. He treated Sheila in an exemplary manner. But he avoided all contact with the old crowd; he was almost ferocious, at times, when one caught him on the street and spoke of former times. Yet all the while he was working steadily upward. Then he happened on that salvage job of the _Mary Foster_, and dumped fifteen thousand dollars into Sheila’s bank account. I met him in Liverpool six months later. He was embarrassed, as if he had no business away from the Pacific. It appeared he had a very good command. But he was going back to San Francisco, just the same----” “Gave up his second chance in a big line,” I interrupted. Gorham nodded. “He couldn’t stand it, you see. Kitty was in California. He suffered the agonies of the damned that night in a little hotel near the landing stage--for Harry Owen wanted to talk, to sit there in that infinitely dingy room in that ill-smelling hostel in Liverpool and tell me the truth, the enormous and insurmountable fact of his existence, that he loved Kitty Melrose; and he dared not. But it showed on his face, white and haggard under the tan; in his hard-bitten lips and tense hands. He tossed up his command and took a miserable old tramp back to the Golden Gate. From that time on, he stayed in the coastwise trade. “Imagine to yourself,” Gorham went on, “the manner of life the man led; instead of getting drunk, he got himself married, and so forever debarred from seeing the one woman the world held for him. He was constantly coming into San Francisco and snatching at the papers to see whether Kitty was engaged, or married; he was constantly leaving the city, knowing that he could never be anything in her splendid life.” “Ah,” I said, “he talked at last, did he?” Gorham ignored my thrust. “There was always Sheila, too. And when I speak of her, of Harry Owen’s wife, I am on firmer ground. She made a confidant of me; she used to visit my office on some excuse or other and conclude by saying abruptly and bitterly, ‘I suppose you won’t tell----’ “That was her complaint about life; none of us who had been part of Harry’s old, youthful days could carry over, so to speak. She was forced to recognize that, when he married her, he had closed a door which she could not pry open.” Gorham tapped the hot ashes out of his pipe thoughtfully.