thing, acknowledged his existence, by even addressing envelopes to him, there was the consolation that, while there is life, there is hope. But silence—dead silence—what could he conclude?
Yesterday, when the clerk behind the general delivery window in the post-office had, as usual, replied curtly, "Nothing," to his inquiry, he had made a vow to wait a month or six weeks before subjecting himself to the sure slap of that "nothing" again. In a month the first of the three letters he had written to Rebecca ought to reach her. In six weeks, or anyway eight, he ought to receive her reply to it, if indeed she did reply, and he thought she would.
He had been very guarded in his reference to her silence in that letter, but he had mentioned it. He couldn't go on forever accepting it without explanation. All he had said was that he had received no message from her the last two times his boat had touched San Francisco.
"Perhaps you have been busy. A young lady in a position such as you are filling hasn't much time for letter-writing, I know, and I shouldn't even want you to write to me, unless you really wanted to. I shouldn't want it to become a duty. Please let me know if keeping up with me has become a little of a duty. For a wandering sailor, such as I am, can easily drop out of a girl's life."
When Mrs. Barton had mentioned the war downstairs, it had flashed across Nathan's mind for the first time as a possibility for him. The war would be an excellent way of dropping out of Rebecca's life. It would be an excellent excuse, too, to offer to the insatiable Mrs. Barton for not joining Rebecca the
