big, glowing.

only thing was that tears were raining down her checks,
round, jewel tears. It wasn't human, sir. It was like a dream.

"Pretty arms," she sighed, and then, as if those words had broken something in her heart, there came a great sob bursting from her lips. To hear it drove me mad. I reached to drag her away, but she was too quick, sir; she cringed from me and slipped out from between my hands. It was like she faded away, sir, and went down in a bundle, nursing her poor arms and mourning over them with those terrible, broken sobs.

The sound of them took the manhood out of me - you'd have been the same, sir. I knelt down beside her on the floor and covered my

face.

"Please," I moaned. "Please! Please!" That's all I could say. I wanted her to forgive me. I reached out a hand, blind, for forgiveness, and I couldn't find her anywhere. I had hurt her so, and she was afraid of me, of me, sir, who loved her so deep it drove me crazy.

I could see her down the stair, though it was dim and my eyes were filled with tears. I stumbled after her, crying, "Please! Please!" The little wicks I'd lit were blowing in the wind from the door and smoking the glass beside them black. One went out. I pleaded with them, the same as I would plead with a human being. I said I'd be back in a second. I promised. And I went on down the stair, crying like a baby because I'd hurt her, and she was afraid of me of me, sir.

She had gone into her room. The door was closed against me and I could hear her sobbing beyond it, broken-hearted. My heart was broken, too. I beat on the door with my palms. I begged her to forgive me. I told her I loved her. And all the answer was that sobbing in the dark. And then I lifted the latch and went in, groping, pleading. "Dearest

- please! Because I love you!"

I heard her speak down near the floor. There wasn't any anger in her voice; nothing but sadness and despair.

"No," said she. "You don't love me, Ray. You never have.” "I do! I have!"

"No, no," said she, as if she was tired out.

"Where are you?" I was groping for her. I thought, and lit a match. She had got to the door and was standing there as if ready to fly. I went toward her, and she made me stop. She took my breath away. "I hurt your arms," said I, in a dream.

- not

She held them out to the never a scar on them "You can't hurt my body," Ray; my poor heart."

"No," said she, hardly moving her lips. match's light for me to look, and there was even that soft, golden down was singed, sir. said she, sad as anything. "Only my heart, I tell you again, she took my breath away. I lit another match. can you be so beautiful?" I wondered.

She answered in riddles but oh, the sadness of her, sir. "Because," said she, "I've always so wanted to be.'

"How come your eyes so heavy?" said I.

"How

"Because I've seen so many things I never dreamed of," said she. "How come your hair so thick?"

"It's the seaweed makes it thick," said she, smiling queer, queer. "How come seaweed there?"

"Out of the bottom of the sea."

She talked in riddles, but it was like poetry to hear her, or a song. "How come your lips so red?" said I.

"Because they've wanted so long to be kissed."

Fire was on me, sir. I reached out to catch her, but she was gone, out of the door and down the stair. I followed, stumbling. I must have tripped on the turn, for I remember going through the air and fetching up with a crash, and I didn't know anything for a spell how long I can't say. When I came to, she was there, somewhere, bending over me, crooning, "My love my love" under her breath, like a song.

www.

But then when I got up, she was not where my arms went; she was down the stair again, just ahead of me. I followed her. I was tottering and dizzy and full of pain. I tried to catch up with her in the dark of the store-room, but she was too quick for me, sir, always a little too quick for me. Oh, she was cruel to me, sir. I kept bumping against things, hurting myself still worse, and it was cold and wet and a horrible noise all the while, sir; and then, sir, I found the door was open, and a sea had parted the hinges.

I don't know how it all went, sir. I'd tell you if I could, but it's all so blurred sometimes it seems more like a dream. I couldn't find her any more; I couldn't hear her; I went all over, everywhere. Once, I remember, I found myself hanging out of that door between the davits, looking down into those big black seas and crying like a baby. It's all riddles and blur. I can't seem to tell you much, sir. It was all -- all - I don't know.

I was talking to somebody else not her. It was the inspector. I hardly knew it was the inspector. His face was as gray as a blanket, and his eyes were bloodshot, and his lips were twisted. His left wrist hung down, awkward. It was broken coming aboard the light in that sea.

Yes,

we were in the living-room. Yes, sir, it was daylight-gray daylight. I tell you, sir, the man looked crazy to me. He was waving his good arm toward the weather windows, and what he was saying, over and over, was this:

"Look what you done, damn you! Look what you done!"

And what I was saying was this:

"I've lost her!"

I didn't pay any attention to him, nor him to me. By and by he did, though. He stopped his talking all of a sudden, and his eyes looked like the devil's eyes. He put them up close to mine. He grabbed my arm with his good hand, and I cried, I was so weak.

"Johnson," said he, "is that it? By the living God-if you got a woman out here, Johnson!"

"No," said I. "I've lost her."

"What do you mean

"It was dark,” said I

"and the door was open

- lost her?"

and it's funny how my head was clearing up the storeroom door

and I guess she stumbled, maybe and I lost her."

and I was after her

"Johnson," said he, "what do you mean? You sound crazy downright crazy. Who?"

"Her," said I. "Who?"

"Fedderson's wife."

"Her," said I. And with that he gave my arm another jerk. "Listen," said he, like a tiger. "Don't try that on me. any good

It won't do that kind of lies - not where you're going to. Fedderson and his wife, too the both of 'em's drowned deader'n a door-nail.” "I know," said I, nodding my head. I was so calm it made him wild. "You're crazy! Crazy as a loon, Johnson!" And he was chewing his lip red. "I know, because it was me that found the old man laying or Back Water Flats yesterday morning me! And she'd been with him in the boat, too, because he had a piece of her jacket tore off, tangled in his arm."

"I know," said I, nodding again, like that.

"You know what, you crazy murdering fool?" Those were his words to me, sir.

"I know," said I, "what I know."

"And I know," said he, "what I know."

And there you are, sir. He's inspector. I'm nobody."

A

T Pedro, the other two passengers in the Halfmoon Bay bus crawled out and, as the driver shot the car forward, their voices floated back with sharp insistence:

"Anson Carr?"

"Yes you know, the man who came into all that money."

Anson Carr heard the query and answer distinctly, and almost for the first time he realized that he had become a person of importance. The thought both pleased and irritated him. He had always had a craving to stand out from the crowd, to be a person of distinction. He had looked forward to the day when the public would whisper as he passed:

'There goes Anson Carr, the famous architect!”

Well, half his dream had come true. At least he was recognized in public places. But he couldn't feel much satisfaction in the circumstances which had pushed him forward. He had the true artist's distaste for money without creative justification, and there was something ironical and humiliating in the fact that what local farne he had achieved had been swamped utterly in the questionable glamour of his new estate. He set his lips together. Well, he would show the public that wealth could be converted into a stepping-stone to something worthy. He would make them forget that he had fallen heir to a large and demoralizing inheritance. And, with a start, he came out of his reverie to a realization that he was nearing the spot which had bound up tragedy and good fortune in one swift stroke. Quite as suddenly the man at the wheel leaned back and said:

"The accident happened there . . . straight ahead where you see the break in the fence. . . . It wasn't the first death on that turn, and it won't be the last."

Anson Carr bent sidewise and looked down at the brush-covered hillside rolling to an abrupt and cruel depth. Instinctively he put his hand upon the shoulder of the driver.

"Let's stop a moment," he suggested.

The man obeyed, reaching for a cigarette. "Did you know them?" he inquired.

"The man was my uncle," Carr finally admitted. And, almost at once, he wondered whether he had made the proper reply.

From Harper's Magazine, July, 1921; copyright, 1921, by Harper and Bros. Republished by the author's permission.

The driver gave him a look of amazed interest. "Oh, you're the fellow who came into all the money!" he drawled, incredulously. "Live in San Francisco?"

Anson Carr nodded. He knew what the man was thinking if an interested relation waited months before visiting the scene of tragedy, why come at all? Without further calculation he broke out, apologetically, "I've been away, you see "-in his haste to justify himself, quite ignoring the fact that he had lied shamelessly and to very little purpose.

The driver looked reassured. "They must have been dead a good part of an hour before they were found," he volunteered, with the keen delight of a man called upon for harrowing details. "I never could figure how the guy who saw them lying there ever got the bodies out."

Carr again debated swiftly the expediency of prolonging the topic. "A Greek found them, I believe."

"Yes - one of the trackwalkers for the railroad. He'd come up this way after some fool weed them Greeks use for salad. He don't look so awful husky, but it takes a good man to carry two dead ones up a grade like that and not drag them any, either."

Carr's voice assumed a casual interest. "A trackwalker for the railroad! Then he must live somewhere about here."

The driver started the machine. "I'll show you his place when we get to the top of the hill."

The bus crawled languidly up the grade, gathering speed as its effort became prolonged. Carr leaned back in his seat and gave himself up to fragmentary speculations. Hedged on one side by the tawny bank into which the road ate its sinuous way, and on the other by a monotonous slope of dun-colored chaparral, the landscape lacked interest. Carr was glad of one thing at least it was a clear day; at this point the usual midsummer fog would have been depressing.

He was still toying fastidiously with his thoughts when the machine came to an abrupt stop. They had reached the summit of the hill and before them a sapphire-blue surge of ocean stretched unbroken to the sky-line. A little gasp of astonishment and delight escaped him. It was unusual for the oceanshore country of central California to be colored with such tropic splendor.

He was recalled from his momentary ecstasy by the pressure of the driver's fingers against his shoulder. "There," the man was saying, pointing in a direct line below, "in that corrugated-iron shack near the sidingthat's where the Greek who found them lives."

Carr looked down. A single and rather forlorn-looking railroad track skirted perilously near the edge of a treacherous cliff; in a jagged curve in the hillside the sun fell glistening upon a blue-silver hut lying at the end of a trail beaten through the fragmentary shale of the mountainside. A thin curl of smoke rose languidly in the amber air. Evidently the Greek was at home. "I don't think I'll go any farther," he declared, somewhat lamely, as he made a movement suggestive of escape. "When does the next bus go back?"

The driver stared incredulously. "About three-thirty from this point. But you never can tell, there may be a full house."