LITMIR.BIZ

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come home to her before it was too late had decided him in an hour to cross the ocean. His remembrance of the woman was so vivid that she might have waited at his side. The fragrance of her remained in his nostrils. The atmosphere of her girlish freshness clung to him. There was an indefiniteness about her like the mystery of the Spring. The Englishman had been right in thinking she suggested Burne-Jones' "Springtime." She was a veritable gold woman.

      As he came to the little hotel hidden away in the fringe of The Bluff's European respectability a Chinaman, waiting as a dog waits, greeted him. It was the Cantonese serang called Chang, who had come out of the maw of death with him in the Kau Lung. Yokohama knew him as Whitridge's shadow.

      "Tlunk all pack, master. Him gone ship. What time you sail?" the Chinaman asked in a breath.

      "Two o'clock," he answered and looked at his watch. It was past noon. He told Chang to call Suki, the flat-faced woman who ran the hotel servants and who had been so good to him in his first few weeks ashore when the doctors were shrugging their shoulders doubtfully; and her daughter, Oki, and the boy he had nicknamed "Sweeney." He had a little present and a gold piece for each of them—two for Suki.

      There were big tears in "Sweeney's" black eyes when "the honorable captain gentleman" said good-by to him. He would never forget him.

      "Yes; you will forget, 'Sweeney,'" Whitridge said in Japanese, with a little laugh.

      "Oh, yes," agreed Suki, "he will forget. Men forget, but women always remember."

      "You know a lot about life, Suki," he answered and turned and went into the hotel office.

      At Whitridge's appearance the boyish-looking clerk behind the desk flushed guiltily and hid something under a book. Whitridge handed him an odd silver cigarette case which the young fellow had often admired.

      "Just a token for your kindness, my boy," he said.

      "Gee, I—I'm sorry you're going away, Captain—Whitr—Whitridge," stammered the clerk and faltering peculiarly at the name. "I'll always keep this. What you've said has braced me up and—as soon as I get a little more money together I'm going home. Good-by and—and the best of luck to you."

      "Good-by and good luck to you," said the departing guest, shaking the young fellow's hand heartily. "You'll come through all right."

      The clerk's gaze followed Whitridge and Chang through the door and until they were clear of the grounds. Then he pulled out an old newspaper. It was what he had hidden at Whitridge's unexpected appearance. Chang had dropped it in packing Whitridge's things. For several minutes he studied the face which looked up at him from a mass of black headlines. It was a portrait of Whitridge beyond a doubt.

      "He's Lavelle all right—but nobody'll ever get it out of me. He's square," he muttered to himself, and as he did so he tore the paper into small bits.

CHAPTER II

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      "You marther get him better you kom-men back?" asked Chang, breaking a long silence as Whitridge and he came to the Cambodia's gangway.

      Just then Miss Granville and her maid went by, but Whitridge did not catch her glance of recognition.

      "You not—you never kom-men back," said the Chinaman, shaking his head disconsolately and bringing Whitridge's gaze away from the splendid figure of womanhood moving up the gangway. The devotion that shone in the yellow giant's eyes pierced his heart.

      "Maybe, Chang—maybe. I don't know," answered Whitridge. "Good-by, old man—good-by." He caught Chang's yellow hand and wrung it and coolies idling round wondered at the sight. "You're white all——" He wanted to tell him that he was white all through, but something closed his throat and he dared not trust himself further. He fled up the gangway.

      When he reached the deck he looked back, intending to give Chang a farewell hand wave, but the Chinaman had disappeared. He searched the pier from end to end, but there was a dimness in his eyes and they made no discovery. He turned to go forward and collided with two men, one in the uniform of a United States naval lieutenant and the other in civilian garb.

      "I beg your pardon," he said quickly and then his gaze met the officer's.

      A challenging tenseness straightened Whitridge. The man in uniform started back a step as if he had been struck. Then, his good-looking, but weak face went pale, his lips parted loosely, and his features became as expressionless as so much putty, under the glance which Whitridge shot at him. It was a glance of but a second. It began in hostility and ended with a lash of contempt as he swung on forward.

      The naval officer watched Whitridge until he disappeared through the saloon gangway.

      "You look as you might—if you had seen a ghost, Campbell," said the civilian.

      "I—I thought I did, Evans," stammered the officer and making an effort to recover control of himself. "I believed—I thought—that man was dead." His voice went to a whisper. "That—that's Lavelle of the Yakutat."

      "No! Impossible!"

      "It's he. I couldn't be mistaken. He was in the class at Annapolis with me."

      "He's a rotter, if there ever was one," interrupted Evans bitterly. The other nodded dumbly. "Good thing he didn't land in the navy."

      "Until he was shown up I was blamed for—for his being 'bilged,' you know. But really I wasn't to blame. Some of the fellows planted some beer and booze in our room; he stood mute, but I had to testify. They expelled him."

      The officer spoke as if conscience-smitten, but his companion did not seem to be listening to him. He interrupted him.

      "It's a mighty unpleasant thing to think of being in the same ship with a man like that," he said very solemnly. As he spoke a shudder passed over him.

      The banging of a gong and a cry of "All ashore, who're going ashore!" cut short the conversation and hurried the officer over the side.

CHAPTER III

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      It was with his soul swept by the pain of all the bitterness of his life that Whitridge had turned away from the two men on deck. His memory of bitterness began with Porter Campbell. He had feared from the day, a week before, when the American cruiser squadron had put in to Yokohama that somebody would recognize him. Now at the last moment his apprehension had been fulfilled. He knew the nature of Campbell too well to dare to hope that he would conceal his identity from the civilian to whom he had been speaking.

      Then, in a flash, he identified Campbell's companion. It was Evans, of the consulate at Hong Kong. He had read in a paper that morning that Evans was en route home by the Cambodia.

      Just as he reached the window of the purser's office Whitridge recognized Emily Granville's maid standing there. The thought seized him that when this ship's company came to put him on the wheel of scorn that she, too, must be there to aid in the torture. He turned quickly as if to retreat. It was not too late; he could escape the agony and the humiliation that he was certain was in store for him.

      Even as he turned he paused with a new sadness. The call in his mother's letter which yesterday's mail had brought to him, came to his mind. The words were burned in his brain:

      "Just to hold you in these withered old arms again and press you to my breast as I used to do when you were a bonny baby boy—that is all I ask. I would go through The Gate happy—and with a smile."

      He turned back toward the window and as he did so he felt the throb of the engines starting the Cambodia down to the sea.

      A slight woman in black, dark of skin and with her raven hair groomed slickly after the fashion

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