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Gates? Her home; so soon, her home!
    She looked back at the house and wondered briefly if Aurelia was sitting in the gloom beyond the window watching them, and looked along toward the west, past the drifting smoke that hovered over the mill, past massed green rocks and sand to the point where the tiny village of Beadon Rock, a clutch of white roofs and trees and a spire or two seemed to grow out of the coral rock and the wind-beaten palms.
    One of those spires marked the church, small and white, its oaken altar rail worn and satiny from age.
    Spray flashed higher in wide glittering arcs on either side as the boat turned in a long curve; Nonie brushed the fine cool moisture from her face and tied her hair more tightly. They came parallel with the village and the pier, and the single street running along behind a flat, long row of warehouses. “Well,” said Jim, abruptly, “that’s good-bye to Beadon Island.”
    She looked at him quickly; the deadly white look of anger had left his face but he was still shaken with it; his voice sounded tired and rough; his mouth was tight.
    “Sometime you’ll come back.”
    He shook his head. “No. Not for a long time. Probably never.”
    “But you are Hermione’s only relative. If anything happened to her …”
    Eventually he’d have to come back to manage Middle Road—he’d live on the island, a neighbor and friend of Royal Beadon’s.
    He was shaking his head again. “No. By that time it’ll be too late for me to make the plantation my job and my life. The time for me to become a planter is now. No—this is the end of Middle Road for me.”
    “But that was why she asked you to come! It isn’t fair to treat you like this.”
    “Oh, well. That’s in the past. I ought not to have let her get under my skin like that. Of course it’s true, everything she said. I haven’t any money. I haven’t a cent. And everything is hers as long as she lives.”
    “But it’s your right. … ”
    “No. Actually and legally, it isn’t. And she did far more for me than she’d have to do; there were no strings on the property, the way it was left. She wasn’t obliged to do a thing. But she sent me to school, paid for everything up to the time I went into the Navy. When I came out I got a job. I’m an engineer; it was in a contractor’s office. It’s what I’m going back to and damned glad of the chance. Give me a cigarette, will you, Nonie? There are some in the pocket of my coat.”
    She got up on her knees on the slippery leather cushion, steadying herself with one hand on Jim’s shoulder. The boat lurched a little as it headed into a wave and she swayed. Jim caught her. “Steady …”
    “Thanks.” She clutched quickly at the back of the seat, aware—too strongly aware again of his nearness, of the strength of the arm that caught and steadied her, of the brown hard cheek so near her own. Holding to the seat she fumbled into the pocket of his top coat. There was something heavy and sagging, too heavy to be a package of cigarettes. Her fingers touched metal and she cried: “Why, Jim, there’s a gun!”
    “It’s mine. Try the other pocket.”
    She pulled the coat around, swaying again with the boat; everybody on the island probably had a gun. The touch of the metal had been startling merely because it was there, because it was cold and unexpected. She found the cigarettes and slid back into the seat again. She lighted a cigarette and he took it without looking at her, his fingers steady and brown.
    “Thanks. It’s funny what a woman like Hermione can do to people. She—well, that’s beside the point. Dick can’t help himself now but I can; I’m no worse off than I was a year ago. In fact I’m damned lucky. I’ll have my profession and a job.”
    And you’ll never come back to Beadon Island, thought Nonie, with a contradictory feeling of desolation. A moment ago she had dreaded his return; now she thought: you’ll never come back to Middle Road plantation. You’ll