The wind died out, as he had predicted, and all the afternoon the brig rolled on the long swells, which hourly grew heavier. They leaped against the horizon, swung onward beneath the keel, and swept past with the unrelenting persistency that seemed the embodiment of vindictive hate. A gale can be combated, but, in the grasp of a calm, man is helpless. Every part of the vessel cried out in protest. The canvas slatted and flapped like the wings of a huge bird vainly trying to rise from the waves; every block rattled and croaked; the main-boom, hauled chock aft, snatched at its sheets with a viciousness that threatened to part them at every roll and made their huge blocks crash; from the pantry below came the constant rattle of crockery; and the blue sea, dipped up through the scuppers, swashed back and forth across the main-deck. By eight bells every stitch of canvas had been furled or clewed up to save it, and the brig lay rolling in the dark hollows like a drunken sailor reeling home.

At dusk Hetty made her way to the forward companionway, and, seating herself on the sill, with her hands clasped about the guard-rail, looked out across the watery waste. The line of her eyes, parallel with the deck, saw the stars fly downward till they seemed to vanish in the sea, which suddenly seemed to tower like a huge black wall above the brig; then suddenly it dropped away, and the stars flew up again, and she saw them fairly overhead. Out of the swashing flood of the main-deck, in a momentary lull, Medbury appeared.

"Is that you, Hetty?" he said."Yes," she answered. "It's awful, isn't it?"

"It's a nasty roll, and no mistake. There's dirty weather knocking about somewhere."

"You mean a storm?"

"Yes."

"Shall we get it?" she asked.

"We may and may not," he answered. "It's hard to say."

"Could it be a hurricane coming?" she asked with awe.

He laughed.

"Haven't you ever heard the sailors' rhymes about hurricanes in the West Indies?" he asked.

That anchors March squarely in the middle of the safe months; so we're all right, you see. No, it isn't a hurricane."

He seated himself on the deck, and, leaning against the door-jamb, braced himself to the roll. For a while they sat in silence, and watched the long rollers infold them—three great ones, then a succession of lower ones, in an ever-recurring sameness that moved the girl with a growing nervousness. At last she turned to him and said:

"I wanted to explain to you that I had no reason to be ugly this morning. But what is the use? Father would always oppose; besides, I am not sure myself. I want to be friends, nothing more."

"Well! that is a wooden tale," he said disappointedly.

"I never said anything different at any time, Tom," she protested.

"Oh, I know. You always had a pair of skittish heels, Hetty." He turned his face to her suddenly. "Is there any one else?"

"No," she said.

"All right," he answered; "I'll hope on. I've been doing that a long time; I'm not going to stop now." He was silent a moment, and then he said: "Do you know how long that's been, Hetty? Fourteen years. We were in school then, and it began the day of that big snow-storm, when I drew you home on my sled. You wore a red jacket, and your cheeks were almost as red. I can see you sitting there now, and smiling whenever I looked back. You were the shyest little thing! When we reached your gate, you just slipped off and ran into the house without turning."

"Oh, do you remember that!"

"I've thought of it under every star in the sky, I think. I guess that's the way it will always be with you—slipping away and not looking back." He laughed a little dolefully.

"I'm not like that," she said in a low voice. "I may go away, but I shall look back. I am no longer a child."

"Then don't go away," he said eagerly; but she stopped him.

"Don't, Tom!" she pleaded. "Don't speak of it any more—now. Just be friends."

"All right, Hetty. It will be as you say. I don't nag my—friends." He smiled forlornly.

In silence they watched the swells racing in. They were like living things, of incredible speed, insatiable, pitiless, rushing on to infold them. As the brig rolled in their grasp, the girl instinctively moved her body against the roll: it was as if she thought to lessen the awful dip of the deck with her puny weight; and whenever the great rollers passed, and the vessel, like a tired thing, lay for an instant almost at peace in the lower levels of the sea, an involuntary sigh of relief escaped her. Medbury heard her and looked up.

"You're not afraid, Hetty, are you?" he asked. "It's disagreeable; that's all."

"No, not really, I think," she answered; "but I wish it would stop."

"It's a regular cradle—as peaceful as that," he assured her. "Only we're a little old for cradles, I guess," he added.

"I am," she said.

Over them the stars raced back and forth; for there were no clouds, only a soft haze that made the stars seem large and near, but without brightness. Close down to the sea a whitish film seemed to spread, making the curtain of the night above it intensely black. Once, as they dipped to port, Hetty's eyes caught sight of a deep-red glow suffusing the lifted wave near the bow. She clutched at Medbury's arm."What is that, Tom—there—like blood?" she gasped.

"That? Why, the reflection of our port light. You poor thing!" he said pityingly. "Hadn't you better go below? It's queer, but on a night like this, or in thick weather, if you once lose your nerve, you see the queerest things. Come, you'll be all right below."

She dropped her face to her hands and laughed.

"No," she said; "now I will stay. There!"—she straightened herself and looked at him smilingly,—"now, I'll be sensible. Why do you look at me like that?" she asked abruptly.

He turned his face away.

"Can't I even look at you? A friend could do that."

"But that was different," she answered. "It was—" The look of yearning love upon his face moved her strangely. She felt the impatient tears flood her eyes. Meanwhile he hastened to speak of other things.

"Do you remember how you used to tie your hair up in two tight little braids?" he asked—"always tied with red ribbon?"

"Mother did that," she answered promptly. "I hated it. I used to tell her they made my head ache. I've forgotten now whether they did or not. But it wasn't always red ribbon."

"Wasn't it?" he asked. "That's what I remember."

"Some things you've forgotten, you see," she told him. "It is easy to forget, after all."

The door of the passage below them opened, and some one stumbled toward them. It was Drew. Medbury slipped away, vexed at the interruption, but Hetty turned a relieved face to the newcomer. In this difference lay the measure of their love.Reaching the deck, Drew almost dropped in the place where Medbury had been sitting. He removed his cap from his head, and passed his hand across his forehead. From the forecastle floated aft, above the jangling noises of the brig, the faint strains of an accordion.

"Just at this moment I have no higher ambition than to sit out there and play like that," said Drew, turning his head to listen.

"It sounds rather nice at sea," said the girl. "Maybe it's because I've always heard it there that I like it."

"Oh, it isn't that," he replied. "It's the care-free touch I envy. Care-free—with all our fixed beliefs tumbling about us! See those stars! And we have been taught to call them steadfast!"

She laughed, and looked at him mischievously.

"You're seasick again," she said. "I knew it by the way you dropped to the deck.""I am," he promptly admitted.

"Well, you're honest; you ought to be proud of that," she told him. "Most men refuse to confess to seasickness until the fact confesses itself." She laughed.

"I might be proud of being honest if I were not too much ashamed of being ill. The lesser feeling is lost in the greater."

"You would feel better if you would not watch the rail. It's the worst thing you can do."

"You are watching it," he said.

"But I am never affected," she replied. "Besides, I'm feeling reckless to-night."

He turned and looked at her smilingly.

"You reckless! You are self-control itself," he declared.

It is strange, but there are times when to be called self-controlled is like an accusation.

"That sounds like calling me hard and unfeeling," she said."Rather say it's calling you happy. I think there is no happiness without self-control," he replied.

"Do you call it happiness," she cried—"rolling like this? I think it is dull."

"All happiness is more or less dull," he declared. "It's the price it pays to discontent, which is supposed to know all the ups and downs of life."

"I should not like to think that," she said soberly.

"Then I hope your whole life may prove it false," he answered.

In the silence that followed, his eyes, searching the night with the fascination in the thought of discovery that the sea gives even to the sighting of a sail, came back to her face and lingered there. For a moment he looked at her with the intent, impersonal gaze that he had directed toward the horizon. She was leaning against the guard-rail, with her hands clasped over her knees, and her eyes turned up to the stars. Her head was uncovered, and her hair looked black above the gleaming whiteness of her face, which wore the intense look of abounding vitality that pallor sometimes gives in a larger measure than vivid coloring. As he watched her face in the dim light, he became distinctly alive to a new impression—the impression that he was becoming strangely drawn to her. The knowledge came upon him suddenly, like a ship looming above him in the night.

It was inevitable that his first thought should be of Medbury; but whatever he might later come to think of his own ethical implication, in this first moment of self-discovery the thought was little more than that he should have a care. In a rush of mental restlessness he rose to his feet and walked to the rail. He could hear the second mate as he tramped steadily back and forth on the quarter-deck, passing like a shuttle from darkness to light as he crossed the glow from the binnacle-lamp. The thump of the wheel jumping in its becket was almost continuous; it irritated him as the louder noises of the sea and the vessel had not done. In the east a red light shone and vanished; again it appeared for a moment. He called Hetty's attention to it, but she did not rise. When it appeared again it was farther to the north.

"It's a steamer going home," she said. "It's like your happiness—just a dull light moving uncertainly through darkness."

"You mustn't think that," he said gently.

"Oh, it's true," she persisted; "I can see it's true. I wanted to go away, but it was only discontent. If I had gone, it would have been the same. I should have been broken in the first struggle."

"To-morrow the wind will blow again, and you will see things in a different light. Nothing will matter then," he assured her.

"Do you think I should have succeeded if I had gone?" She turned toward him sharply while she waited for his answer.

He had seated himself again, and he paused a moment before he replied.

"I think you would have put your whole heart into your work," he said at last. "When we do that, we need not think of results—or fear them—need we?"

"I shall always feel that it was right for me to go," she said, after a pause. "The regret will remain."

"It is hard to say what is right, we owe allegiance in so many ways. A week ago your going was simply an interesting thought to me. Now I cannot bear to think of it."

She caught her breath sharply.

"There's your steamer again," she exclaimed. "It's almost gone."

It came to him vividly, with her conscious refusal to follow his leading, that he was not having a care; and he added in haste: "I can see the tragic significance of such a decision, now that I am no longer a stranger—this putting away of all your old life—your father and mother. Think what it means to them! Life has many facets: we've got to look at them all."

"Yes," she said slowly, as if she were looking at them all in turn; then she continued: "But if we study them too closely, isn't there danger of being simply irresolute and accomplishing nothing?"

"To crown the present hour—might that not be the hardest, and therefore the noblest, task?" he asked smilingly. "A nature that is overwhelmed by its first disappointment will not be likely to succeed in any path. That is not yours, I am sure."

"It is easy for you to say that," she answered, with a touch of impatience; "you have found your chosen work; I must stay at home. What can we women in seaports do? We tremble through storms, and then wait in fear for the marine news." She laughed at her own exaggeration.

"It makes strong, hopeful women," he declared stoutly.

"Is that all you ask of your work—to be made strong and hopeful?" she demanded. "It makes me think of life as a gymnasium."

"No," he answered frankly; "but I have not found my chosen work, or, rather, my chosen field."

"May I ask what that is? Do you mind telling me?"

"I shall be glad," he replied. "It is simply to work among the poor in a large town or city. I cannot go among the little children of the crowded streets without a heartache. That is where my work calls me. I love the people of Blackwater, and I can be happy there when I can forget for a time; but I am not needed. Sometimes I feel that no one is needed, they are so firmly fixed in their beliefs, so hopelessly certain of themselves. But the little children of the crowded streets!" He broke off suddenly.

They heard the bell forward ring out sharply. Both counted the strokes in silence.

"Eight bells," she murmured, as it ceased.

The forecastle door opened, and a shaft of light flashed like an opening fan along the wet, shining deck. Shadowy forms began to move about, and vanished in the darkness. Then the door was shut, and the deck was dark again; only the clamor of the rolling vessel and the sea about her went on unceasingly.

"I am glad you told me," Hetty said at last in a low voice that had in it a tremor of exaltation. She did not turn to him as she spoke, but kept her eyes fixed upon the lines of whitened waves glimmering in the dark."It was little to tell," he said, with a laugh.

"It was much to know," she answered gently.

He wondered at the touch of feeling in her tone, for he could not know that, having condemned him for a seemingly Laodicean contentment with life, with as little reason she was now prepared to exalt him unduly, seeing in his desired course a form of martyrdom at once moving and heroic. It was in the line of her own desire, and the thought flashed upon her that here was something even she might be permitted to do.

They had come tremblingly to the heights of emotion: a little thing might send the streams of their life together, or bear them farther and farther apart.