HONITON was touched by the evidence of the Scotchmen's continued goodwill towards him, but through Peter Brown he conveyed to them a refusal of their invitation. He could not bring himself to facing even those who were prepared to treat him as though there had been no change in his reputation. He preferred solitude and his own bitter thoughts, even at the risk of hurting their feelings. Not until he felt assured that darkness and the night air had driven the last of the passengers below would he venture on deck and start upon his weary mechanical tramp.

He had paced the length of the deck twice, when, turning at the forward limit of his course, he was arrested by the sound of his own name, spoken in little more than a whisper, but in a voice that he could not mistake.

He stopped abruptly and looked around into the darkness, his pulses throbbing almost painfully. He had a wild impulse to turn and run rather than face again the torture of a meeting; but something in the tone in which she spoke his name held him back.

At first he could see nothing, then, as she moved in the darkness, he saw her figure dimly as a more opaque black than its surroundings. He waited, breathless, for what she would say.

"I have waited for you," she said in a constrained yet tremulous voice, "because there is something that I want to say that I must say."

He made no answer in the pause that followed, but waited, wondering, to hear her voice again.

"I-when you told me— what you did, I behavedvery badly. I can hardly speak of it for shame. I feel that I must ask you to forgive me. I-the shock was-so great. Afterwards I could hardly believe that I hadacted so."

Her phrases came to him brokenly from the darkness, and his heart yearned and ached for her. Was it not enough that she should suffer from her disillusionment without having this additional cause for pain? That she should be able to sink the former in remorse for her momentary instinctive lapse into elemental passion brought him to a new

I

"I have forgotten them. do not know if I even heard them. I could think-can think —of nothing but how I deceived you; how I took advantage of your innocence of life-how I broke your heart-and mine.'

Jocelyn was silent. She had said all that she admitted to herself that she had come to say, yet she did not go.

Honiton waited. He had nothing more to say. His confession had ended all that he could ever say to her, and he waited, dumbly, for her to close the interview. Instead of that, she spoke again, a new note of entreaty in her voice.

resignation.

Honiton answered with difficulty. To him it was the tearing open of the wound and the rubbing of irritants into its rawness.

"I can offer no excuse," he said painfully. "I am guilty." "But-but- Oh, Frank,

I can't think of you as a common thief."

Through the darkness there came to him the sound of her sobs, and his nails dug into his hands as the impulse came upon him to rush forward and take her in his arms. He groaned aloud in the agony of his helpless sympathy.

The sobs died away, and she spoke again.

"I want to know-I must know-how you came to be a thief. If there is no excuse for you, perhaps-perhaps I can learn to hate you-I have a right to that, if I can. You owe it to me to tell me."

Though he could not see her face, he knew that she waited for him to speak. He did not know how to begin. He had never attempted to analyse his past, to picture to himself the stages by which he had reached his present position.

"I never thought of it all much until I met you," he said slowly, hunting round in his mind for some loose end in the tangle of his thoughts. "I just went ahead. I thought it was a sporting risk, and I made a great point of never taking-stealing-except from

to lose. I'm not myself. I know now that that doesn't matter, but there it is."

"I want to know more. How did you come to begin? Were you brought up to steal? Oh, I want to know everything.'

Honiton tried to concentrate his mind upon his past. As Jocelyn had said, she had a right to know if she wished it, however much it might hurt him in the telling.

"I needed money," he began again abruptly. "I was not brought up to work, and when my father died-my mother died years before-there was much less for me than he had led me to expect. I was fit. for nothing but a junior clerk, and that was no use to me. I had been brought up to spend money freely. So I-I just drifted into it."

He stopped as abruptly as he had begun. He did not want to elaborate the bald story, to put into it the human touches that might seem to supply excuses for his sins. Having realised their iniquity, he was prepared to accept his punishment in full.

Perhaps the girl guessed at his desire for self-immolation. She would not accept the explanation that he had given. She hungered for the detail in which she might discover something in extenuation of the simple viciousness that he had outlined.

"I read a book about a fellow like myself. He was quite a decent chap, and somehow the things he did didn't seem so very bad. He was a gentleman, and a sportsman too. He looked upon robbery as a kind of sport, where he took his chance against the police and a term in prison. I read that book again and again, until I came to look on stealing as lightly as he did."

He stopped to think.

"Yes-go on," said Jocelyn's voice from the darkness.

"I had to have money, or lose my friends and position. The chance occurred at a reception.

I saw a diamond

brooch slip to the floor in the crush, unnoticed. I picked it up quickly and slipped it into my pocket. I had no scruples. The woman who owned it was loaded with diamonds and the loss was nothing to her. After that I went on. I had a flat in the West End, and many wealthy friends who thought I was quite well off, so I was never suspected. I did not steal from my friends, though I made use of information that I got through them. My life was idle, and I enjoyed the excitement of the risk I took. There is no need to tell you in detail of the robberies I committed. I have surely said enough? "

Jocelyn did not answer the question in his last words.

"If you were free now, would you go back to that life? "

'My God-no!" exclaimed Honiton with as great and genuine abhorrence in his voice as though all that he had confessed had been in reference to another than himself.

"But why not? You are the same man as you were then. If your instincts led you to do such things then-why not again?"

Jocelyn spoke in a puzzled tone. She wanted to understand. The complexity of the man's mind was beyond the range of her own single-mindedness, and she could not reconcile its contradictions.

"It did not seem to matter then. I can't explain-I can't even understand how I felt about it, because I feel so differently now."

Honiton, too, was puzzled by the inconsistencies of his feelings. The awakening of his dormant moral sense through his love for Jocelyn had rendered it impossible for him to understand his old point of view, still less for him to convey it to another.

"I can't understand you," said Jocelyn. "As it is the last time we shall ever talk together, I want to understand. It will it will make things easier for me, I think. When you had a chance to escape at Malta, why did you come back?

"What else could I do? replied Honiton simply. "I made a bargain with Brown.

"It was different somehow," replied Honiton helplessly. "I have always kept my word, and tried to act honourably to my friends. I can't even try to explain the difference."

He heard Jocelyn sigh in the darkness.

"I shall never understand you," she said piteously.

There was a pause, and then she spoke again, hesitatingly. "You will be sent to prison?" "That is certain. I mean to plead guilty," he answered. And when you come out again?"

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"I have not thought. will be years. But I suppose I can find work somewherein the Colonies probably.

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"I suppose so," said Jocelyn in a toneless voice. There is nothing more to be said—is there?"

"I have told you all I can," he answered.

He saw her dark shape move and heard her light steps upon the deck. She was leaving him without a word of farewell. He listened as she moved slowly away out of his life, then, desperate, called"Jocelyn!" "Yes?"

She stopped and waited for him to speak. Now that he had his opportunity he was

what he wanted to say. He had called her upon the impulse of the moment, desperately clinging to the last glimpse of her.

"Before you go," he stammered, "can you say a kindly word-a word of forgiveness? I have no right to ask-I know it. But if only I could think that you had ceased to be bitter against me, it would make the future-less bitter for me."

She did not answer at once, but stood thinking what she could say. In the end it was from the hardness and narrowness of her youth that she spoke -youth that would not let her waver from the truth, as she saw it, even to ease the torture of the man she loved. "How can I say I forgive

you," she said bitterly, when I cannot even forgive myself for having-loved you? You have made me ashamed of my own feelings. At least I will not lie to you.

If I could stop thinking of you-as before, perhaps I could forgive you. I would not then have the shame of loving unworthily. No-I can pity you-I do pity you, but it would be a lie to say that I forgive you."

She waited to hear if he would answer her, and then, as he made no attempt to speak, she turned again to go.

"Good-bye, Jocelyn," she heard him say, faintly, speaking almost as if he were afraid that she might hear.

"Good-bye, Frank," she answered, and hurried awayafraid of herself.

It was not until the morning of the next day that Peter Brown found an opportunity to give Honiton's message to Murray and Scrymgeour. They received it with their customary lack of outward emotion, and invited the detective to join them in a drink, an offer which he accepted more from a wish to gratify them than to quench an imaginary thirst.

When he had gone, and they had the smoking-room to themselves, they sat puffing earnestly at their pipes in a silence that seemed likely to be permanent, but which was broken at last by Scrymgeour.