the wheeling stars and the silence of the ocean at dawns, had given him,
he dimly realized, an inarticulate reverence for the supreme mystery of
creation. He was unable to put it into words or facile prayer but it was
the guarded foundation of most that he was, and it bred in him a contempt
for lesser signs. The religion of his birth, the faith of Taou Yuen, the
fetishism of the Zanzibar Coast, he had regarded as equally important, or
futile--the mere wash of the immensity of beauty, the inexorable destiny,
that had seemed to breathe on him alone at the stern of his ship.

He lost himself now in the keenness of his remembered emotion: the
church faded into a far horizon, he felt the slight heave of the ship
and heard the creaking of the wheel as the steersman shifted his hands;
from aloft came the faint slapping of the bunt lines on rigid canvas,
the loose hemp slippers of the crew sounded across the deck, the water
whispered alongside, the ship's bell was struck and repeated in a
diminished note on the topgallant forecastle. The morning rose from
below the edge of the sea and the pure air freshened.... His thoughts
were recalled to the present by the dogmatic insistence of the
clergyman's voice, promising heaven, threatening hell. His gaze rested
on the chalky debility of Madra Clifford.

The service over, the aisle past the Ammidon pews was filled with a
slow-moving inquisitive throng. Rhoda chose to wait until the greater
part was past, and then she followed with the unmoved Taou Yuen and
Gerrit. "This is my brother's wife," he heard the former say. "Mrs.
Saltonstone, Gerrit's sister, Mrs. Clifford and Miss Vermeil. Yes... from
Shanghai. Overdue. We were worried, of course." Taou Yuen smiled
vigorously and flapped the vivid fan. Against her brilliant colors, the
carved jade and embroideries, silver and apple blossoms, the other women
looked colorless in wide book muslin and barege, with short veils of