quite perceptible to the girl who leaned over the bow-rail, her
handkerchief pressed to her nose, and gazed interestedly at the steep
bank, up and down which the sweating coolies swarmed like Gargantuan
rats. They clawed and scrambled up and slid and shuffled down; and
always the bank threatened to slip and carry them all into the swirling
murk below. A dozen torches were stuck into the ground above the
crumbling ledge; she saw the flames as one sees a burning match cupped
in a smoker's hands, shedding light upon nothing save that which stands
immediately behind it.

She choked a little. Her eyes smarted. Her lips were slightly
cracked, and cold-cream seemed only to provide a surer resting place
for the impalpable dust. It had penetrated her clothes; it had
percolated through wool and linen and silk, intimately, until three
baths a day had become a welcome routine, providing it was possible to
obtain water. Water. Her tongue ran across her lips. Oh, for a drink
from the old cold pure spring at home! Tea, coffee, and bottled soda;
nothing that ever touched the thirsty spots in her throat.

She looked up at the stars and they looked down upon her, but what she
asked they could not, would not, answer. Night after night she had
asked, and night after night they had only twinkled as of old. She had
traveled now for four months, and still the doubt beset her. It was to
be a leap in the dark, with no one to tell her what was on the other
side. But why this insistent doubt? Why could she not take the leap
gladly, as a woman should who had given the affirmative to a man? With
him she was certain that she loved him, away from him she did not know
what sentiment really abided in her heart. She was wise enough to
realize that something was wrong; and there were but three months
between her and the inevitable decision. Never before had she known