And he put his arm round her. He understood. Why not? There are certain attractions which are irresistible, and Jane was unconscious of her possessions.
Jane raised the bottom layer of cotton wool. What impulse led her to do this she could not say, but she found a slip of paper across which was written:
“An’ I learned about women from ’er.”
All this while, across the street, in the shadow of an areaway, stood a man in a mackintosh and a felt hat drawn well down. He had watched the van disgorge and roll away, the arrival and the departure of the messenger boy.
He began to intone softly: “‘Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.’”
With a sluing lurch to his stride he started off down the street, into the lashing rain. A great joke; and now there was nothing at all to disturb his dreams—but the dim white face of Jabez Flint spinning in the dark of the sea.
THE END
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.