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remark, “and the biggest goddamned bore!” By the time she celebrated her twentieth birthday—and according to the standards of the day was in grave danger of being classed as an Old Maid—there had still been no sign of any Leander: unless her Uncle Nathaniel’s handsome step-son, Clayton Mayo, could be regarded as a possible swimmer of the Hellespont. Numerous young men had looked and admired. But only from a distance, for a closer acquaintance had invariably resulted in disappointment and a hasty retreat; the young sparks of Boston preferring dimpled and sweetly feminine charmers to Grecian goddesses who looked them squarely in the eye, had no patience with coyness, swooning or the vapours, and considered flirting vulgar.
    Clayton Mayo had proved to be the solitary exception. But Barclay, in his daughter’s opinion, had been impossible about Clay!
    Hero was well aware that her father (when he took the trouble to think about it!) was worried by the lack of suitors for her hand. Yet he had been extravagantly annoyed by young Mr Mayo’s attentions to her, and greatly relieved when Clayton had agreed to accompany his stepfather to Zanzibar in the semi-official capacity of confidential secretary.
    Hero had not seen Clayton again, but in a letter smuggled to her by a sympathetic housemaid he had promised to “prove by his constancy the enduring nature of his regard’, and to return one day, having made his fortune, and formally request her hand in marriage. Which, though gratifying, was hardly romantic. But then it had not been a particularly romantic affair.
    Clay had only kissed her once—and then on the cheek, because realizing his intention she had suddenly taken fright and turned her head away at the last moment. And after he had sailed and the strife and agitation had had time to subside, she was inclined to think that perhaps everything had turned out for die best, because until her father had interfered she had not been in the least certain about her feeling for Clay.
    Then, little more than a year later, Barclay died very suddenly from a heart attack, and after that there was nothing to keep his daughter in Boston or prevent her from setting out in search of her destiny. Nothing but an unbearably empty house, for even Miss Penbury had long since retired to a cottage in Pennsylvania. Hero Athena Hollis was free to do what she liked and go where she wished, and when Aunt Abby’s letter arrived urging her to visit them in Zanzibar, she had accepted thankfully and without hesitation. And without pausing to remember that old Biddy Jason, who had spoken of sun and salt water and an island full of black men, had also said: “Things you want, you have to pay for.’ Whether Clayton was one of those things remained to be seen.
    There had, of course, been difficulties. Cousin Josiah Crayne, who as Chairman and co-owner of the Crayne Line Clippers might have been expected to help, had been deeply shocked. It was unthinkable that any young woman of his family (Hero must not forget that her own dear mother had been a Crayne!) should even contemplate a voyage to such an outlandish spot—and without so much as a maid or a chaperone to accompany her! He would have nothing to do with it, and he had taken the opportunity to read her a blunt lecture to the effect that people who felt called upon to do good to others had much better make a start in their own back-yard rather than in someone else’s. She would find, said Cousin Josiah, plenty of scope for her charitable instincts right here in Massachusetts.
    He had not been the only one to express disapproval. Numerous other relatives and connections had not hesitated to add their own strictures, but neither lectures nor family disapproval had altered Hero’s decision: for save in the matter of Clayton she had always had her own way and got what she wanted, and now she wanted to go to Zanzibar. Not only as an escape from grief or to see Clay again, but because she was firmly