It was raining at Culebra—had been raining for days. For miles and miles the sky was overcast, hour after hour the rain came down, now swiftly and in showers, now in a light drizzle which gave to the surrounding country an aspect of greyness, a cheerless, depressing hue.

It was between eight and nine o’clock in the forenoon; her husband had gone to his work and Susan was busying herself with her household duties. She was pensive, moving about as one who had no energy; her mind was not set about what she was doing, her thoughts were far away.

She knew that Catherine must have told Jones on the previous night her answer to his letter: she was wondering what he had said, whether he had determined to go back to Jamaica without seeing her, whether all was over between them now. . . .

There was a knock at the front door: she went to answer it. She opened the door: on the veranda stood Samuel, the last person in the world she expected to see at Mackenzie’s house that day.

“You!” she exclaimed. “What y’u doing up here?”

She stood guarding the doorway, as if to prevent him from entering; she was trembling all over with fear, not of Jones, but lest her husband should unexpectedly return and find Samuel there.

“You not going to let me in?” asked Jones, with a note of pleading in his voice; “I have only come to have a talk with you.”

“You shouldn’t come,” she answered. “What a trial is this! I told Kate to tell you I couldn’t come to Colon now, an’ here you come to Culebra to make trouble. What’s the good of all this, Sam?”

She did not wait for him to answer.

“You must go right back,” she insisted, “for the neighbours goin’ to tell Mackenzie dat a strange man come here to-day, an’ if you stay an’ him find out it is you, he will believe what Tom write an’ tell him. You can’t remain here, Sam.”

Her words, her earnest manner, her evident determination not to let him enter, left Jones at a loss what to do. He had taken the early morning train to Culebra; he had left Colon for the purpose of speaking his mind to her: he wanted to relieve his feelings. While in the train he had kept his courage up to the sticking point; again and again he had rehearsed to himself his grievances; even when he left the train and was climbing the hill he felt that he would be able to go through with the scene which he had pictured. But when he neared the house which was pointed out to him as Susan’s, he had been conscious of some hesitation in his mind, of an inclination to pause and consider whether he was acting wisely. He had fought down that inclination; he was now standing face to face with Susan. But she, though frightened, was resolute, and he stood before her perplexed, uncertain what to do.

“You going to stay at the door all day?” he asked her.

“No, for I don’t expect you goin’ to remain here.”

“You not even going to ask me to take a seat?”

“What for?”

“I am tired. I didn’t sleep all last night; I walk from the train station to this house, and all you do is to insult me like a dog. I only came here to tell you good-bye. I am taking the steamer to Jamaica to-morrow.”

“To-morrow?”

“Yes. I don’t want to stop here any longer.”

Her eyelids fluttered; she gazed at him in blank silence; she felt that he had spoken the truth, had made up his mind to leave Panama. In a little while he would return to the station, in a few hours he would be on his way . . . home.

The patter of the rain on the roofs and ground played a heavy accompaniment to the beating of her heart. Through the thick atmosphere came steadily the booming sound of dynamite explosions in the Cut. Boom, boom, boom: the heavy noise assaulted the ear, but she herself was conscious only of a deadly stillness within her. Suddenly Jones put out his hand. “Good-bye,” he said.

For answer, she stepped backwards. “Come in and sit down a little, if you tired,” she said.

He entered, glanced carelessly around him, and sat down. She left the door open, threw open all the windows also, as if there were a dead body in the house. Anyone passing could see them, no one could imagine or say that she was entertaining Jones clandestinely. “Mackenzie shouldn’t come back before half-past twelve,” she remarked; “but if he come you must tell him that you come up here to tell him an’ me good-bye.”

She sat at some distance from him, and by one of the open windows.

“What you going to do in Jamaica?” she asked.

“I don’t know, an’ I don’t care. I should never have come to this place. In fact,” he added, breaking out a little, “I am goin’ to kill meself!”

“Stop talking stupidness, Sam,” she said quietly: “you know y’u not goin’ to do nothing of the sort. I suppose at first you thought you would make a quarrel wid me up here?”

He feebly protested that such a thought had never entered his mind, but knew that he did not convince her. He was aware now that a quarrel at Culebra would have been a hopelessly foolish thing.

Both of them fell into silence after this. There seemed nothing more to say. Both of them appeared to be listening to the rain, to that persistent booming of the explosions; both of them were wondering if this were really their last leave-taking.

One question formed itself again and again in Susan’s mind: “Would it not be better to sacrifice respectability, religion, and go with him?” Sitting face to face with him, knowing that to-morrow he would be on his way to Jamaica, the answer “Yes” was whispered to her from her heart. As if he knew what was passing in her mind, he asked her suddenly:

“And you won’t make up you’ mind to come with me, Sue?”

If “Yes” rose to her lips, she resolutely shut them. A few seconds passed before she replied.

“Something tell me, ‘Better not,’ Sam. But I am sorry.”

She covered her face with her hands.

“Kiss me an’ tell me good-bye, Sue.”

He had risen and was standing over her. She got up, glanced quickly outside: no one was passing. She kissed him.

He left the house, walking hurriedly away. She fell back into her chair, crying as she had never cried before.

Jones walked rapidly in the direction of the Culebra station. He knew that Susan cared for him still; he believed that if he waited and persisted he would be able to break down her resolution. But he might have long to wait, and he did not feel equal to that. His work at Christobal had become a dreary drudgery. It would be better to go back to Jamaica, and that he would do the next day.

He did not blame Susan now; he felt for her nothing but kindness and affection. It was Mackenzie he blamed; Mackenzie it was who had inveigled her away from him: Mackenzie was the cause of her unhappiness and his. But even while he thought this, he felt in his heart of hearts that he himself had been the first cause of Susan’s desertion of him. He had promised to marry her and had broken his word. He had made a fool of himself in Colon. He sought for excuses for his conduct; he found many; yet his self-accusation persisted: conscience was by no means dead in Samuel Josiah.

He reached the station; there he learnt that there would be no train leaving for the next couple of hours. This delay he had not foreseen: he wondered what he should do with himself in the meantime. He could not return to Susan’s house.

He lounged about the station for a few minutes, but his thoughts troubled him and inaction was irksome. He must do something, he would walk about a little: he turned his back to the station and took the road leading down into the Culebra Cut. He had never been inside the Cut before. Troubled in mind as he was, the scene there made demands on his attention. Soon he was looking about him with wondering eyes.

On either hand of him rose lofty walls of rock and earth, carved into wide terraces which formed the buttresses of the mighty Cut. He was walking along one of these terraces; on it and on all the others train lines were laid. The trains were passing up and down, powerful engines dragging twenty, thirty, forty dump-cars laden with the stones and dirt that had been dug out of this part of the Canal; and at the bottom of the ditch and along the sides of it steam shovels were at work.

He watched these shovels curiously. He saw long cranes attached to engines, and at the end of each crane an iron box with a movable lid and bottom. The crane swung round, was lowered, the iron box or mouth bit into a pile of earth and rock shattered by dynamite, gorged itself, swung round again until it hovered over a dump-car. Then the bottom of the box opened slowly and a mass of earth and stones was poured into the car. Again the shovel swung back, and again and again was this process repeated. He remembered that Mackenzie was engaged on one of those steam shovels, and thought that perhaps he was, without knowing it, watching Mackenzie’s shovel at work.............