enough," he resumed, "even pitiful; but he sticks in your head. I wish
I'd never brought his damned chest to Salem. A fool would have known
better. I'm worse--a childish fool. A derelict," he said again. "You are
smashing over a swell at twelve knots or more, everything spread, when,
in a hollow, there it is squarely across your bow. No time to shift the
wheel, and a ship's missing, perhaps in a hundred fathom. It might be the
best ship afloat, the best master and stoutest crew, but in a minute
she's only a salty tangle."

He laughed uneasily at the vividness of his fancy. "If it's hard for us
what must it be for Taou Yuen?" he demanded. "Married to me! Here! That's
courage for you." He tramped down the steps, across Pleasant Street, with
his bare head sunk, and vanished into the obscurity of the Square. She
caught a last glimmer of white trousers, a faint rapid gleam where his
lighted cheroot described the arc of a passionate gesture on the night.

The spring, like the full buds of the hedge roses in the Ammidons'
garden, passed swiftly into early summer. The flowers against the house
showed gay perennial colors, the stocks and larkspur and snapdragons
succeeded the retreating flood of the lilacs. The days were still yellow
pools of heat, or else cooled by the faintly salt sea wind drawing down
the elms and chestnuts, followed by purple-green nights of moonlight.
They seemed to Sidsall to hold everything in a pause. She saw less and
less of Taou Yuen who now scarcely came out of her room except for an
occasional ride in the barouche with Mrs. Ammidon or a contemplative hour
in the garden, usually at dusk. Apparently content with the elaborate
rearrangement of her headdress, she sat for long periods, gazing out over
Washington Square, idle except for the regular tap of her pipe emptying
the ashes of the minute bowl.