In the morning Gregory awoke after a wonderfully sound sleep. It was still very early. There was a delightful pearly light in the sky, visible through his open porthole. The glitter of the barely risen sun lay faint upon the ocean. He remained for a few minutes, breathing quietly, trying to recall the events of the night before. They came back to him with a shock, followed by an immense sense of relief. He remembered what he had done without a thought of regret. He had cast away the fruits of his enterprise, the possibility of wealth, and he was full of rejoicing. In those few seconds of glad thought, the world seemed a different place, wealth, after all, but a trifling part of its joys, youth and love suddenly great and wonderful things. A clearer light seemed to be pouring in upon some possible future, a new atmosphere of happiness encircling him. He sprang out of bed. He would have an early bath and send a note round to Claire. She must forgive. She must understand. She must realise the sacrifice he had made. Then, as he reached for his dressing gown, he felt as though he were turned to stone. Up on its accustomed place, its eyes meeting his, its lips mocking him, was the Image. He stood looking at it, for once genuinely terrified. Then he pressed the bell feverishly, and stood there with his thumb upon the knob until Perkins came running in.

“Where the hell did that come from?” he demanded, pointing to the Image.

Perkins smiled with the air of one who imparts good tidings.

“The bos’un sent it up early this morning, sir,” he explained. “It was in one of the lower boats, swung out from the main deck—gone right through the canvas but there isn’t a scratch on it.”

Gregory drew on his dressing gown and staggered out on to the deck. He walked up and down for an hour and a half, fighting a distinct and definite battle, and with every step he took it seemed to him that he became saner. His waking idea took shape, gave him encouragement and life. With his craving for what it might have to give abandoned, the power of the Image, too, for evil, must decline. He wanted those jewels no longer. He was ready to face life and all its possibilities from a new standard. He went down to his bath, visited the barber, and dressed before any of the passengers were astir. Then he made his way into the writing room and drew paper and ink towards him. He wrote fluently, and without hesitation. All that he wished to say seemed so clear:

These few lines, dear, bring my prayer to you for pardon. The doctor talks of nerves. Well, I never suffered from them, and I would as soon believe in the supernatural. I believe that there is evil in my treasure. Last night, in a fit of self-disgust, I tried to throw it overboard, but it was caught by one of the canvas-covered boats on the lower deck and when I awoke this morning it was back in its accustomed place. If your answer to this note is what I pray for, it will be overboard before we meet, and overboard in such a place that it will sink to the bottom of the sea.

Will you marry me, Claire, as soon as we reach England, and my father and your uncle can meet and give their consent? I don’t pretend that I am a particularly desirable person, but I am, at any rate, not too bad to realise that you are the dearest and sweetest thing I have ever met, or to fail in keeping my word when I promise that you shall never regret it if you say “yes.” I haven’t a great deal to offer you, beyond my love, but that I offer to you, not in the spirit of last night in the shadow of that accursed Image, but earnestly, and faithfully, and eternally.

Please send me just a line. The black Buddha waits to know his fate, and I mine.

Perkins took the note, and after his departure Gregory climbed to the upper deck and stood there leaning over the rail, forgetting even to smoke, watching the sun mount a little higher and spread its gleams a little farther across the ocean, watching the blue haze of coming heat blot out the clearness of the horizon, waiting with an eagerness utterly unfamiliar, with a sense of having suddenly changed personalities with some simpler and stronger being. At last the head and shoulders of Perkins appeared, coming up the ladder.

“Your breakfast is in your room, sir,” he announced, as he handed over the note he was carrying.

Gregory made no reply. He was looking at the handwriting upon the envelope; rather faint and delicate, not too legible. For a moment or two he turned the note over. He absolutely feared to open it. A wave of pessimism had seized him. Then he suddenly tore the envelope across and read:

Dear Mr. Ballaston,

I am so sorry but I cannot say “yes.” I appreciate your letter and I try to sympathise with what lies behind it, but, to be quite honest, I cannot just now believe in you. I do not myself believe in the supernatural, nor can I bring myself to believe in the superstition of which you speak. I can, therefore, only think of you as one whom I was beginning to like very much indeed, but who has disappointed me bitterly.

I am sorry, but that is how I feel, and it is useless for me to pretend otherwise. If you wish to be kind, please keep away. It is foolish, of course, but you see I am a little lonely here, and, after what has happened, I shall feel so much happier not to find myself alone with you again.

Gregory read the letter twice, then sent it fluttering away in little white fragments, watching them fall like snowflakes upon the sea. Afterwards he descended to his stateroom. He sat on his camp stool, stirred his coffee, and looked across at the Image. Then, with his left hand, he kissed his fingers to it.

“I give you best, my friend,” he groaned. “Count me your disciple.”

Gregory was on deck even before his accustomed time. He showed unusual interest in the ship’s run and greeted Claire, when she appeared very late and looking pale and tired, with the casualness of a steamer acquaintance. He talked lightly with Mrs. Hichens, exchanged remarks with his other fellow passengers, and, notwithstanding the slight air of aloofness which was habitual to him, he took a prominent part in the sports of the day. He conducted an auction pool with success and he refused no man’s invitation to drink. At night, though, when the dancing started, he obstinately refused to leave the smoking room, pleaded a weak ankle and confessed to an inordinate thirst. The doctor came in and sat beside him.

“More trouble?” he asked quietly.

Gregory shrugged his shoulders.

“No particular trouble,” he replied. “I’m rather fed up with dancing, besides which I have worn through the soles of my only pair of patent shoes.”

“Is Miss Endacott in a similar predicament?” the doctor enquired. “I see that she is not on deck.”

“Miss Endacott is probably reading one of Paley’s sermons to Mrs. Hichens,” he answered a little sarcastically. “I wonder why the devil some one doesn’t look after your libraries on board ship, Doctor. There are no less than eleven different volumes of sermons there. No doubt you got them cheap, but who wants them, especially on a voyage where one is supposed to send one’s morals overland.”

The doctor rose to his feet.

“There is nothing I can do for you?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Gregory replied. “Have a drink.”

The doctor shook his head.

“I am in earnest,” he persisted. “I am still at your disposal. If you want a sleeping draught, I’m your man, or an ambassador—well, I’m here. Otherwise——”

“It happens to be otherwise,” Gregory declared, a little brutally.

“Perkins,” Gregory Ballaston asked, sitting up in his bunk a few mornings later, and gazing distastefully at his tea, “was I very drunk last night?”

“No more than usual, sir,” was the man’s somewhat gloomy answer. “The chief steward in the second class sent for me and I brought you up myself.”

Gregory sighed.

“Bad, Perkins—bad!” he admitted. “I ought not to have gone there at all. Was I—er—misbehaving more than usual?”

“You seemed to be making a little free with the young women down there, if I might say so, sir,” Perkins replied.

Gregory poured himself out some tea.

“Well, it was the last night, anyhow,” he said, with an air of relief. “I am landing at Marseilles.”

“I have packed most of your things, sir,” the man announced. “I expect they’ll bustle the overland passengers off the ship as quickly as possible. We’re a good many hours late as it is, and the train will be waiting.”

“I am going the other way,” Gregory confided. “I have a strange feeling, Perkins, that I am likely to win at Monte Carlo. I have been there twice before and lost pretty well all I possessed at the moment. This time I feel like winning. Anyway, I am going to try my luck.”

“When shall I be able to finish your packing, sir?”

“Whenever you like and as soon as you like. I don’t care for this ship, Perkins. You’re a good fellow and you’ve looked after me very well, but I don’t like the rest of them any more than they like me. You wouldn’t say that I was a popular person on board, would you, Perkins?”

The man made no reply for a moment. He was occupied thrusting the trees into some evening slippers.

“If I might make so bold, sir,” he said at last, “you have only yourself to thank for what people think. You have acted queerly more than once, sir.”

“A fact,” Gregory murmured; “a damnable fact!”

“And I don’t hold,” the man went on, “with this sitting in the smoking room, taking a drink with anybody who comes along, and going down to the second class, when there’s plenty of your own sort on board, sir.”

“You’re a sound fellow, Perkins,” Gregory admitted, as he swung out of his bunk. “Is my bath ready?”

“Waiting, sir.”

“And, Perkins,” Gregory continued, as he struggled into his dressing gown, “some time this morning I want you to bring me some packing cloth and get the carpenter to find you a box. I can’t take my Image about like that. I’m going to send it home to my father—a little souvenir of my visit to China. I think it might brighten up the household.”

“I’ll fetch you the packing cloth and box, sir, with pleasure,” Perkins assented, looking up at the Image dubiously, “but if it belonged to me I know what I should do with it.”

Gregory paused enquiringly. The steward was still looking over the rail of the bunk with an expression of disgust.

“I should chuck it overboard and have done with it, sir.”

“But it is valuable,” Gregory expostulated, swinging his towel; “worth a lot of money, Perkins. No one knows quite how much but it’s worth a great deal of money.”

“’Tain’t for its looks, anyway,” the man muttered.

Gregory went through his usual morning routine—his bath, the swim, the gymnasium and the coiffeur. Afterwards he made a leisurely toilet in his stateroom, slipped out on to the deck at a moment when it was almost deserted, and walked across to the smoking room with swift footsteps, lithe and graceful, notwithstanding the debauch of the night before, carefully dressed as usual, his eyes as bright as ever, no sign of evil living in his clear complexion. Yet, for all his presentability, no one knew better than he that he had gradually become the most unpopular person upon the ship. The captain had taken to looking the other way when he passed. The doctor’s nod was of the curtest. Mrs. Hichens never pretended not to cut him. Claire alone, on the few occasions when they passed or met face to face, bowed gravely, sometimes even exchanged a word of greeting. She still spent the time on deck as usual, but always with Mrs. Hichens by her side. One or two of the women with whom he had exchanged a few civilities still looked wistfully for him when the dancing began—his grass widow had indeed boldly attempted to waylay him one evening on his return from the dining saloon. Gregory, however, lied with cynical impudence, declared that he had sprained his ankle and would not dance again for the rest of the voyage, and then promptly walked alone for an hour through the summer darkness on the upper deck. On another occasion an enterprising young woman, whose courage was greater than her discretion, sought him out in the smoking room and tried to gain his confidence. She rejoined her friends after a very brief absence, a little ruffled. Gregory’s politeness was icy, but on one point he seemed to have made up his mind: He was ready to gamble with any one, to drink with any one, but so far as the women were concerned—the women of his own quarter of the ship—he avoided them with a finality which admitted of no advances. He played cards all through the long summer days and moonlit, Mediterranean nights, for stakes much higher than the ship’s officers approved of, but he never approached the dancing spaces or entered the music room where the ladies congregated. Rumour went about that he had been sent to Coventry, and, as was natural, on an Eastern liner, there were no end of scandalous stories. One of them, and a name, he happened to overhear, and he gave the smoking room something to gossip about for the rest of the day. He rose from his seat and approached the little group.

“May I ask your name, sir?” he enquired of the man who had told the story; a large man, well under medium age, but puffy and loud-voiced.

“Why, you surely may,” was the prompt reply. “Richard Thomson. We’ve played cards together more than once.”

“Well, Mr. Thomson,” Gregory said, “I have to tell you that I dislike the mention of ladies’ names in a smoking room. I dislike it so much, especially when allied with scandalous fiction, that I am going to throw you out on to the deck.”

The man tried bluster, but he fared the worse for it. He picked himself up, sprawling, from somewhere near the rails, and spent his morning trying to interview various officers of the ship. The purser at last was commissioned to approach Gregory.

“I have a complaint, Mr. Ballaston,” he announced, a little stiffly, “from Mr. Thomson. He asserts that you used violence to him in the smoking room.”

“Quite correct,” was the deliberate reply. “I don’t like him. I shall probably throw him out again if he comes in.”

“An affair of this sort is not to be treated so lightly, sir,” the purser declared. “I must request some sort of an explanation or else that you apologise to Mr. Thomson.”

Gregory considered for a moment.

“Very well,” he said, “I will offer you this much of an explanation. I heard Mr. Thomson make use of the name of a young lady in the smoking room. He coupled her name with a story, which, although it may not have reflected any positive discredit upon her, was yet untrue. I object to the use of ladies’ names in a smoking room, and I did what I should have done at any time in my life, and what I should do again this afternoon and again to-morrow if necessary—I threw him out. As to apologising to him—I will fight him with one hand or standing on one leg, or I will shoot at him and let him shoot at me from any mark he likes, or give him what is termed ‘satisfaction’, in any such manner as he can suggest, but sooner than apologise I would throw him overboard first and spend the rest of the voyage in irons myself if necessary.”

The purser’s face relaxed.

“I will report your explanation to the captain, Mr. Ballaston,” he promised.

Nothing more was heard of the matter. Thomson somewhat ostentatiously played bridge out on deck with his friends, and Gregory, suddenly sick of his smoking-room companions, invaded the ship’s library and abjured cards. He drew a great sigh of relief when at last, amidst the screaming of tugs and a strange silence in the engine room, they were brought in to Marseilles docks. He lingered about for an hour after the gangways were down, hoping to be the last to leave the ship. In the customs shed, however, when he made his belated appearance there, he came face to face with Claire and Mrs. Hichens. The latter ignored him; Claire held out her hand.

“Good-by, Mr. Ballaston,” she said.

Gregory was taken aback. He could not refuse her hand, but he could find no words. Mrs. Hichens walked on. They were for a moment alone together.

“I am very sorry,” she continued, “that I had to answer your letter as I felt. I am trying to forget all that is disagreeable in our friendship, and remember only how thoroughly we enjoyed the first part of the voyage. Will you please do the same—and good-by!”

She was gone with a friendly little nod before he could gasp out any more than a muttered monosyllable. For a moment he almost followed her. Then he realised a certain finality about that gesture and turned away. Before he had finished with the customs the Paris train had left. He stood for a while at the barrier, looking after it almost wistfully, his thoughts travelling homeward. It was late spring now. There would be a scent of violets in the air, cowslips coming up in the meadows, honeysuckle in the hedges, and sweeter than anything, the wild roses making their faint appearance. He thought of the rambling, stately gardens at the Hall, the odour of the late hyacinths, the warmth of the sun on the day when the gardeners opened the potting sheds and brought out the geraniums. He could hear the lazy humming of the mowing machines, the soft splash of water from the fountain on one of the terraced lawns. It was a very beautiful home there, waiting for him; poverty-stricken, perhaps, a little silent, a long way aloof from the throb and thrill of life, the will-o’-the-wisp of happiness which he had pursued so tirelessly, which he was in quest of again, even now. Then he had a sudden vision of Claire, and of showing her the house, the gardens, the park, the woods beyond, the peace of it, the softly flowing waters of the trout stream, the hum of insects. He had a vision of Claire too, seated at the carriage window, looking out, perhaps herself not wholly happy, perhaps even at that moment with a tear in those still tender eyes. The sweetness of her, the sweetness which he had terrified, the childishness which that accursed Image would have had him disturb! It was like a black cloud upon his mind and thoughts. Then a raucous voice in his ear:

“Il faut vous dÉpÊcher d’enregistrer vos bagages pour Monte Carlo, monsieur. Le Rapide arrive.”

His fit of dreaming passed, and he came back to the world of small everyday things, went through the tiresome formality of registering his luggage, found a place in an empty compartment, dozed and dreamed a little more, and finally was dragged behind a screaming locomotive into the curiously unimpressive station of Monte Carlo, the hills behind glittering with lights, the long sea front curving away into Italy. He shook himself and, descending, made his way to the hotel, bathed and changed and sat down to write a few momentous lines home:

My dear father,

I have come here from Marseilles for a few days, perhaps longer—it depends upon the luck. Meanwhile you will receive from Tilbury, soon after the ship docks, the Image we got away with. You won’t like it. If I were to tell you how I loathed it you would think I was mad, but from the practical point of view everything that I heard in China confirms your story. In either this Image or the other one, which, alas, fell into the hands of a firm called Johnson and Company who have branches nearly everywhere in the East, are packed the whole of the treasures of the Yun-Tse Temple. Have an expert examine it, but don’t do anything about breaking it up until I return. There are reasons against this.

I suppose everything is as usual—no money, heavier taxation, plenty of debts, and Uncle Henry denying himself even a new suit of clothes. I hope Madame progresses, and that her new doctor will be able to work the great miracle. Here is an amazing coincidence, of which you will hear more before you see me. In the last letter I wrote you I told you about my adventure on the Yun-Tse River and Wu Ling, the Chinese trader who rescued me. Well, Wu Ling is a member of the firm of Johnson and Company, the great Eastern merchants, and one of his partners is Ralph Endacott, who used to have a Chair at Oxford, a great Oriental scholar, and—as you perhaps know—Madame’s brother. He has a very delightful niece whom I saw something of on the voyage home. He himself is winding up his affairs and coming to England shortly. They have some idea, I believe, of taking a house in Norfolk. Endacott himself is a somewhat austere person who looked upon my enterprise with a good deal of disfavour, and myself, I am afraid, with more. The niece, however, is perfectly charming.

Well, I shall be home for the summer. I got through all right without a scratch, as you know, but for the first time in my life I think I have a touch of nerves. The shadow of our elms ought to help. I’ll write again as soon as I have decided when to come home.

Thanks for your last letter. I don’t think you need send any money. If I want it I’ll wire.

Gregory dined alone, receiving the warm welcome of the maÎtres d'hÔtel with whom he was acquainted, and the other supernumeraries of the great hotel. Afterwards he went across and took out his cards of admission to the Casino, flung a few counters on one of the outside tables in the “Kitchen” and, losing them, came out, called in at the office of the Sporting Club for his ticket and presently mounted the front stairs, prepared for such serious gambling as he could afford. There was something almost allegorical in the wide opening of the doors as he entered. He seemed engulfed once more into the world of pleasurable adventure. Only for the first time the whole thrill of it was wanting. The tables themselves he eyed with all his old appetite, as he counted his money and planned his campaign. His inherited love of gambling was undeniable. The green cloth, the patter of the cards, the call of the croupiers, the rattling of the roulette ball, each had their fascination. It was the other things of which he seemed to have suddenly tired, which somehow, in a moment of presentiment as he looked through one of the great windows towards the moon, hanging down over the harbour, he knew would never appeal to him in quite the same way again. The following morning he supplemented his letter home by a telegram:

Don’t send any money have won hundred milles very bored going Rome with Carruthers to-night shall return within a month.