He was still deep in the interior of that shoe on which my eyes too

were resting.
"Have you thought any more of this deal in potatoes I spoke to you

about the other day?"
"No, I haven't," I answered curtly. He checked my movement to rise

by an austere, commanding gesture of the hand holding that fatal
shoe. I remained seated and glared at him. "You know I don't

trade."
"You ought to, Captain. You ought to."

I reflected. If I left that house now I would never see the girl
again. And I felt I must see her once more, if only for an

instant. It was a need, not to be reasoned with, not to be
disregarded. No, I did not want to go away. I wanted to stay for

one more experience of that strange provoking sensation and of
indefinite desire, the habit of which had made me - me of all

people! - dread the prospect of going to sea.
"Mr. Jacobus," I pronounced slowly. "Do you really think that upon

the whole and taking various' matters into consideration - I mean
everything, do you understand? - it would be a good thing for me to

trade, let us say, with you?"
I waited for a while. He went on looking at the shoe which he held

now crushed in the middle, the worn point of the toe and the high
heel protruding on each side of his heavy fist.

"That will be all right," he said, facing me squarely at last.
"Are you sure?"

"You'll find it quite correct, Captain." He had uttered his
habitual phrases in his usual placid, breath-saving voice and stood

my hard, inquisitive stare sleepily without as much as a wink.
"Then let us trade," I said, turning my shoulder to him. "I see

you are bent on it."
I did not want an open scandal, but I thought that outward decency

may be bought too dearly at times. I included Jacobus, myself, the
whole population of the island, in the same contemptuousdisgust as

though we had been partners in an ignoble transaction. And the
remembered vision at sea, diaphanous and blue, of the Pearl of the

Ocean at sixty miles off; the unsubstantial, clear marvel of it as
if evoked by the art of a beautiful and pure magic, turned into a

thing of horrors too. Was this the fortune this vaporous and rare
apparition had held for me in its hard heart, hidden within the

shape as of fair dreams and mist? Was this my luck?
"I think" - Jacobus became suddenly audible after what seemed the

silence of vile meditation - "that you might conveniently" target="_blank" title="ad.方便地；合宜地">conveniently take some
thirty tons. That would be about the lot, Captain."

"Would it? The lot! I dare say it would be convenient, but I
haven't got enough money for that."

I had never seen him so animated.
"No!" he exclaimed with what I took for the accent of grim menace.

"That's a pity." He paused, then, unrelenting: "How much money
have you got, Captain?" he inquired with awful directness.

It was my turn to face him squarely. I did so and mentioned the
amount I could dispose of. And I perceived that he was

disappointed. He thought it over, his calculating gaze lost in
mine, for quite a long time before he came out in a thoughtful tone

with the rapacious suggestion:
"You could draw some more from your charterers. That would be

quite easy, Captain."
"No, I couldn't," I retorted brusquely. "I've drawn my salary up

to date, and besides, the ship's accounts are closed."
I was growing furious. I pursued: "And I'll tell you what: if I

could do it I wouldn't." Then throwing off all restraint, I added:
"You are a bit too much of a Jacobus, Mr. Jacobus."

The tone alone was insulting enough, but he remained tranquil, only
a little puzzled, till something seemed to dawn upon him; but the

unwonted light in his eyes died out instantly. As a Jacobus on his
native heath, what a mere skipper chose to say could not touch him,

outcast as he was. As a ship-chandler he could stand anything.
All I caught of his mumble was a vague - "quite correct," than

which nothing could have been more egregiously false at bottom - to
my view, at least. But I remembered - I had never forgotten - that

I must see the girl. I did not mean to go. I meant to stay in the
house till I had seen her once more.

"Look here!" I said finally. "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll
take as many of your confounded potatoes as my money will buy, on

condition that you go off at once down to the wharf to see them
loaded in the lighter and sent alongside the ship straight away.

Take the invoice and a signed receipt with you. Here's the key of
my desk. Give it to Burns. He will pay you.

He got up from his chair before I had finished speaking, but he
refused to take the key. Burns would never do it. He wouldn't

like to ask him even.
"Well, then," I said, eyeing him slightingly, "there's nothing for

it, Mr. Jacobus, but you must wait on board till I come off to
settle with you."

"That will be all right, Captain. I will go at once."
He seemed at a loss what to do with the girl's shoe he was still

holding in his fist. Finally, looking dully at me, he put it down
on the chair from which he had risen.

"And you, Captain? Won't you come along, too, just to see - "
"Don't bother about me. I'll take care of myself."

He remained perplexed for a moment, as if trying to understand; and
then his weighty: "Certainly, certainly, Captain," seemed to be

the outcome of some sudden thought. His big chest heaved. Was it
a sigh? As he went out to hurry off those potatoes he never looked

back at me.
I waited till the noise of his footsteps had died out of the

dining-room, and I waited a little longer. Then turning towards
the distant door I raised my voice along the verandah:

"Alice!"
Nothing answered me, not even a stir behind the door. Jacobus's

house might have been made empty for me to make myself at home in.
I did not call again. I had become aware of a great

discouragement. I was mentally jaded, morally dejected. I turned
to the garden again, sitting down with my elbows spread on the low

balustrade, and took my head in my hands.
The evening closed upon me. The shadows lengthened, deepened,

mingled together into a pool of twilight in which the flower-beds
glowed like coloured embers; whiffs of heavy scent came to me as if

the dusk of this hemisphere were but the dimness of a temple and
the garden an enormous censer swinging before the altar of the

stars. The colours of the blossoms deepened, losing their glow one
by one.

The girl, when I turned my head at a slight noise, appeared to me
very tall and slender, advancing with a swaying limp, a floating

and unevenmotion which ended in the sinking of her shadowy form
into the deep low chair. And I don't know why or whence I received

the impression that she had come too late. She ought to have
appeared at my call. She ought to have . . . It was as if a

supreme opportunity had been missed.
I rose and took a seat close to her, nearly opposite her arm-chair.

Her ever discontented voice addressed me at once, contemptuously:
"You are still here."

I pitched mine low.
"You have come out at last."

"I came to look for my shoe - before they bring in the lights."
It was her harsh, enticing whisper, subdued, not very steady, but

its low tremulousness gave me no thrill now. I could only make out
the oval of her face, her uncovered throat, the long, white gleam

of her eyes. She was mysterious enough. Her hands were resting on
the arms of the chair. But where was the mysterious and provoking

sensation which was like the perfume of her flower-like youth? I
said quietly: