Married! What was he thinking about? How could he ever get married? And he was only a kid anyway, not half ready for life as he had been brought up to envision it. Yet here he was, by reason of this sudden financial cataclysm, standing as it were on one side of a great rift in the rock that rooted them and seeing it widen and widen into a yawning chasm with an invading sea to separate them.

He stood there speechless, looking at her pretty hands as they fingered his gift lightly, caressing it with one hand that flashed with jewels her father had bought her, exclaiming over its beauties, saying that she would carry it always and that it was the loveliest bag she had ever seen, and lifting lovely glances to his grave face. He watched the lights play in and out among the waves of her glorious red-gold hair, and suddenly his heart seemed likely to burst. He wished he were a child and could put his face down in his hands and cry.

And then into the midst of it came the awful warning: “All ashore that are going ashore!”

For an instant the two young things looked aghast, questioning, into one another’s eyes. Then the girl rallied first.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Thurl! It isn’t forever! I’m coming back, you know!” She said it lightly, cheerfully, and then she reached up her hands and drew his face down and kissed him lightly on the lips, still laughing.

“Now go quick,” she laughed, “unless you’ll go along, you know!” she added mischievously and pushed him from her toward the gangway.

Thurlow went forward with the surging multitude that was staying on land. He walked as in a daze, his heart dumb with sorrow. The touch of Barbara’s lips had been light as a butterfly’s wing, just brushing his. The thrill of that kiss remained, and yet he was conscious at once that there was a quality of aloofness about it. It was just a casual good-bye kiss, with nothing to distinguish it from the farewell she had given the rest of her friends who had come down to see her off. Perhaps her own girlishness had demanded that it should be so, he told himself as he stepped from the gangplank to the dock, trying to defend her even as he felt the pain of his conviction. Yet there was to him about that kiss something so final, in spite of the merry words she had spoken about her return, that his heart could not accept any hope. She did not know how she would find him when she came back. She did not know that he would be no longer in her pleasant circle of friends, that he might even be gone from the hometown. But there had been no room in her light planning of the future for any such possibility. She had said the words so lightly, as if all things would go right on just as they had been when she was at home, and she would come home to find them as ever on her return. As if there was plenty of time to settle great questions and eternal friendships. As if it didn’t matter any more to her than that. She was off for a good time, and of course he would be just as devoted when she returned, and she—well, she was not even showing any special tenderness for him, her oldest, most intimate friend. Just that light acceptance of his devotion as a matter of course.

He did not resent it, but it hurt. Somehow as he stepped back in the crowd where he could get a good view of her as she stood smiling on that upper deck where he had left her, it hurt inexpressibly that she had not sensed that he was passing through seas of trouble and had not given him at least a look, a tenderer smile than just what she was handing out to every one of her friends.

There would perhaps come times later when he could reason this out more clearly and see that she was excited and did not realize what she was saying or doing; when he could feel that perhaps beneath all her joviality she was feeling the separation from him even as much as he did himself. Oh, he knew he would try to make himself think that in the lonely days ahead of him. But just now the hurt was too deep and keen for any alleviation.

He found himself a position at the back of the home crowd who were all standing together in a bunch, the fellows with their arms across one another’s shoulders, calling out unheard last messages, throwing now and again a snarl of bright paper ribbons to strike the deck rail before her and unfold in fluttering tribute down the side of the ship, chanting some giddy doggerel of a song familiar to the crowd.

Thurlow stood behind them, grave, sad, his eyes on the girl’s bright face, and could not be sure that any of her signals or smiles were for him.

She held his gift in her hands, and once she held it up and wafted with her fingertips a kiss toward the land as if she might be saying another thanks for just him alone, but then he saw that the kiss went wide with her lovely gesture, and all the others were flinging back merry kisses. The air was full of them. He turned from it all half sickened, closed his eyes, and drew a deep breath. For an instant, he felt as if the earth was reeling under his feet. Then quickly he opened his eyes, looking steadily toward that ship again as a siren sent up its terrifying farewell. Fool that he was! He must not take this to heart so. He was here to see this thing through, and he was a man!

He managed a grave smile and a wave of the hand at the last as the ship moved out from shore. Then he stood with lifted hat and watched her lovely figure standing there, moving away from him, out, out—! What a terrible thing a ship’s sailing was! The sea separating people who had been a part of one another’s lives for long, happy years!

He turned away while her face was still visible as she stood there smiling back to shore and waving joyfully. Somehow he could not bear to see it fade to nothing.