closely as they
sailed onward. One, a young lady, very young in manner, wore a black felt
hat with a floating scarlet feather, and was clad about the shoulders in
a mantle of foreign style and pattern. The other you might have taken for
a wandering Don, were such an object ever known; so simply he assumed the
dusky sombrero and dangling cloak, of which one fold was flung across his
breast and drooped behind him. The line of an adolescent dark moustache
ran along his lip, and only at intervals could you see that his eyes were
blue and of the land he was nearing. For the youth was meditative, and
held his head much down. The young lady, on the contrary, permitted an
open inspection of her countenance, and seemed, for the moment at least,
to be neither caring nor thinking of what kind of judgement would be
passed on her. Her pretty nose was up, sniffing the still salt breeze
with vivacious delight.

'Oh!' she cried, clapping her hands, 'there goes a dear old English gull!
How I have wished to see him! I haven't seen one for two years and seven
months. When I 'm at home, I 'll leave my window open all night, just to
hear the rooks, when they wake in the morning. There goes another!'

She tossed up her nose again, exclaiming:

'I 'm sure I smell England nearer and nearer! I smell the fields, and the
cows in them. I'd have given anything to be a dairy-maid for half an
hour! I used to lie and pant in that stifling air among those stupid
people, and wonder why anybody ever left England. Aren't you glad to come
back?'

This time the fair speaker lent her eyes to the question, and shut her
lips; sweet, cold, chaste lips she had: a mouth that had not yet dreamed
of kisses, and most honest eyes.

The young man felt that they were not to be satisfied by his own, and
after seeking to fill them with a doleful look, which was immediately
succeeded by one of superhuman indifference, he answered:

'Yes! We shall soon have to part!' and commenced tapping with his foot
the cheerful martyr's march.

Speech that has to be hauled from the depths usually betrays the effort.
Listening an instant to catch the import of this cavernous gasp upon the
brink of sound, the girl said:

'Part? what do you mean?'

Apparently it required a yet vaster effort to pronounce an explanation.
The doleful look, the superhuman indifference, were repeated in due
order: sound, a little more distinct, uttered the words:

'We cannot be as we have been, in