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“I don’t know,” answered Pearse, “that that’s any of your business.”

Dan’s little eyes were like the eyes of an angry pig.

“You’ve got five hundred pounds of mine,” he said; “why do you think I gave it you?”

Zachary bit his fingers.

“That’s no concern of mine,” he said. “I sail on Wednesday. Your money’s safe.”

“Do you know what I think of you?” said Dan.

“No, and you’d better not tell me!” Then, with one of his peculiar changes, he smiled: “As you like, though.”

Dan’s face grew very dark. “Give me a plain answer,” he said: “What are you going to do about her?”

Zachary looked up at him from under his brows.

“Nothing.”

“Are you cur enough to deny that you’ve married her?”

Zachary looked at him coolly. “Not at all,” he said.

“What in God’s name did you do it for?”

“You’ve no monopoly in the post of husband, Mr. Treffry.”

“To put a child in that position! Haven’t you the heart of a man? What d’ ye come sneaking in at night for? By Gad! Don’t you know you’ve done a beastly thing?”

Zachary’s face darkened, he clenched his fists. Then he seemed to shut his anger into himself.

“You wanted me to leave her to you,” he sneered. “I gave her my promise that I’d take her out there, and we’d have gone off on Wednesday quietly enough, if you hadn’t come and nosed the whole thing out with your infernal dog. The fat’s in the fire! There’s no reason why I should take her now. I’ll come back to her a rich man, or not at all.”

“And in the meantime?” I slipped in.

He turned to me, in an ingratiating way.

“I would have taken her to save the fuss–I really would–it’s not my fault the thing’s come out. I’m on a risky job. To have her with me might ruin the whole thing; it would affect my nerve. It isn’t safe for her.”

“And what’s her position to be,” I said, “while you’re away? Do you think she’d have married you if she’d known you were going to leave her like this? You ought to give up this business.

“You stole her. Her life’s in your hands; she’s only a child!”

A quiver passed over his face; it showed that he was suffering.

“Give it up!” I urged.

“My last farthing’s in it,” he sighed; “the chance of a lifetime.”

He looked at me doubtfully, appealingly, as if for the first time in his life he had been given a glimpse of that dilemma of consequences which his nature never recognises. I thought he was going to give in. Suddenly, to my horror, Dan growled, “Play the man!”

Pearse turned his head. “I don’t want your advice anyway,” he said; “I’ll not be dictated to.”

“To your last day,” said Dan, “you shall answer to me for the way you treat her.”

Zachary smiled.

“Do you see that fly?” he said. “Wel–I care for you as little as this,” and he flicked the fly off his white trousers. “Good-morning…!”

The noble mariners who manned our boat pulled lustily for the shore, but we had hardly shoved off’ when a storm of rain burst over the ship, and she seemed to vanish, leaving a picture on my eyes of the mate waving his cap above the rail, with his tanned young face bent down at us, smiling, keen, and friendly.

…. We reached the shore drenched, angry with ourselves, and with each other; I started sulkily for home.

As I rode past an orchard, an apple, loosened by the rainstorm, came down with a thud.

“The apples were ripe and ready to fall, Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall.”

I made up my mind to pack, and go away. But there’s a strangeness, a sort of haunting fascination in it all. To you, who don’t know the people, it may only seem a piece of rather sordid folly. But it isn’t the good, the obvious, the useful that puts a spell on us in life. It’s the bizarre, the dimly seen, the mysterious for good or evil.