Emily would not eat until at noon that day Lavelle commanded her to do so. Watching him, she saw that he ate hardly as much as the little that passed her lips. She did not see him drink at all. Neither had he drunk at the morning meal. As she recalled this his words as he had given her the water in the night came back: "I will straighten it out." This was the way he was "straightening it out." The thought brought tears to her eyes and made her ashamed.  
The sense of loneliness that was borne of Elsie's passing had grown upon her with the hours. She was yearning for sympathy and she would have turned to Lavelle, but she sensed that somehow a new barrier had arisen between them—a wall not of her building, but of his. When he spoke to her his voice was very gentle, but neither his manner nor his speech invited her to say anything.
 
As Lavelle lay down at Chang's feet, shortly after luncheon, to take the sleep which he must have to meet the night, Emily remarked in a tone of anxiety that he had removed the bandage from his head.
 
"Yes," he answered simply. "It is all right. The clean salt air is a good physician. The sea hurts, but it also heals—if one will only let it."
 
His face might have been a mask. The gray eyes closed wearily as he spoke and he buried his face in his arm and away from the sun's glare.
 
The years had taught Paul Lavelle how to suffer alone. He was suffering now. When he looked up from Elsie's dead face that morning into the gold woman's he thought he saw something in her eyes to make him pause. He had surprised the glance again, he imagined, as he turned round from the burial. He knew life too well not to understand whither a woman's sympathy might carry her.
 
Emily, looking down at the long, lithe body stretched in the bottom of the boat, kept repeating to herself: "The sea hurts, but it also heals." She sought a meaning in the words which she felt she had missed.
 
Rowgowskii, drawing near, interrupted her thoughts with a pleasant salutation in French. This big dark man had a finish and poise familiar to her world and he could talk with a brilliance which made it possible for her to forget momentarily the unpleasant familiarity of his black eyes, and the pendulous underlip which signaled the sensuous animal in him. During the morning he had made an effort to be sincerely comforting and reassuring and she was thankful to him. After a few idle words Rowgowskii's gaze wandered down to Lavelle.
 
"He feels badly over the death of that woman?" he asked, looking up at her with a strange directness. Emily answered with a nod of acquiescence. A smile passed over his face. With a significant shrug, he added: "I understood aboard the ship—the Cambodia—that they were—très intimes." He searched the face of the golden-haired woman to see if his dart had found a mark. But he mistook Emily Granville. She was not one who could be read as one ran. She was silent.
 
"Men of his kind—well, they are a strange, strange lot," he went on.
 
"I have no desire to discuss Mr. Lavelle," said Emily.
 
"Of course not. Pardon me, Miss Granville. I was told the painful story aboard the ship. I understand your feelings. You will pardon me, I hope. It is because of what this man is that I fear for you. These Chinamen would do murder at his word. He is armed; I am helpless, but I will find a way."
 
Rowgowskii leaned nearer and whispered:
 
"We should be sailing in the opposite direction. Did you know that, Miss Granville? Over to the east we should be going."
 
Emily met his gaze now, with a pallor beginning to overspread her face.
 
"But do you think he does not know?" she asked, and her voice trembled.
 
"If you will remember it was he—this man—who changed the course of the Yakutat," answered Rowgowskii. "I have been thinking that you might induce him to change—to do right."
 
Consternation seized her at the mention of the Yakutat. It bore quick doubt in her heart; then fear. Her new faith was torn from its moorings. Her mind lost all sense of its bearings.
 
"Why have you not spoken to him?" she asked.
 
"I mentioned it this morning. He ignored me. That Chinaman there"—he indicated Chang with a glance—"that beast there—told me that I could walk ashore if I did not like the way things were done here."
 
Neither had observed Chang for some time, but now Emily looked up at him............