"I know only the simple prayers of the sea," Lavelle added. With that Emily found her voice.

"She—she would want you to say those—and so would I—if——" Her eyes closed, and as from a great distance she heard him intoning the Lord's prayer. She realized that never before had she known its full meaning. There came a pause and she looked up. The boat was fluttering into the wind. The Chinamen, save Chang, who had to stand to the helm, and Rowgowskii, were on their knees.

Lavelle stood with Elsie in his outstretched arms, facing an arc in the sky where a blush of the dawn still lingered. The breeze seemed to pause. As Chang checked the boat's way Lavelle bent over and laid the burden in his arms upon the sea. So might a mother have put down a child to rest.

"'We therefore commit her body to the deep,'" he said very distinctly, "'to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of this body, when the sea shall give up her dead.'"

His gaze lingered overside for a moment and then he added:

"It's a clean grave, little woman."

Turning quickly away from the sea he seemed another man.

"Sail on!" he snapped at the helmsman.

CHAPTER X

Emily would not eat until at noon that day Lavelle commanded her to do so. Watching him, she saw that he ate hardly as much as the little that passed her lips. She did not see him drink at all. Neither had he drunk at the morning meal. As she recalled this his words as he had given her the water in the night came back: "I will straighten it out." This was the way he was "straightening it out." The thought brought tears to her eyes and made her ashamed.

The sense of loneliness that was borne of Elsie's passing had grown upon her with the hours. She was yearning for sympathy and she would have turned to Lavelle, but she sensed that somehow a new barrier had arisen between them—a wall not of her building, but of his. When he spoke to her his voice was very gentle, but neither his manner nor his speech invited her to say anything.

As Lavelle lay down at Chang's feet, shortly after luncheon, to take the sleep which he must have to meet the night, Emily remarked in a tone of anxiety that he had removed the bandage from his head.

"Yes," he answered simply. "It is all right. The clean salt air is a good 

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