Lavelle recognized a steamer's masthead light at a glance. In that instant it passed out of sight.

"Only a shooting star," he answered, for he would not add to her misery, and she left him alone in the night, undreaming of the bitter thought that was smiting him.

If he had put the boat on her present course an hour sooner he undoubtedly would have crossed that vessel's track.

CHAPTER IX

It was not to sleep that Emily returned when she carried the water to Elsie of Shanghai and, crouching in the cramped space, took the woman's scorching head in her lap. Elsie was murmuring in a semi-coma, sometimes in English, but more often in Chinese. Occidental though she was, this woman's long, hard years in the gateways of the Far East had breathed in her the Orient's spirit of fatalism. The stoicism of the children of the sunset lands was hers; the immobility of feature which marks them was sealed in her striking, irregular features. Her manner of speech and expression were theirs.

"I wonder if they will burn me in hell this way," she gasped as Emily put the cup to her avid lips.

"No, no, you mustn't have such thoughts," Emily whispered.

Elsie was in pain. The difficulty with which she breathed told that. Yet only now and then did a hardly audible moan escape her lips.

"He said I must be brave—that I was brave—that I must be patient," and Emily Granville knew that this strange woman was thinking of what Lavelle had said to them in the morning. "Did you ask him—the captain—for this water?" she asked after a seemingly very long time.

"No," Emily told her with a feeling of guilt. "He made me bring it to you. He said it would be all right."

"God, what a white man—what a white man! Oh, I know men, my dear child," and Emily imagined that a sneer was upon her lips. "I know them as the Canton money lenders know their gold." She spoke with a fierce tenseness. "I've trafficked in them—traded in them—as they trade in guns—and opium at Macao." Her breath stopped in a quick gasp. Emily pressed another sup of water between her lips.

"Are you afraid of death, my dear?" Elsie whispered.

"I—I don't know——But you mustn't think these terrible thoughts," and yet as she spoke Emily Granville wondered at the calmness which possessed her. A different 

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