his broad forehead, his strange, deep eyes were resting upon my face,
calmly, openly.

Under that gaze my heart fell. In former days there had been in his face
something not unakin to this stormy free night; but now it was
changed--how changed!

A year had wrought a terrible alteration. I knew not his past; but I did
know that he had long been struggling, and a dread fear seized me that
the struggle was growing too hard for him--his spirit was breaking. It
was not only that the shadows were broader, deeper, more permanently
sealed--there was a down look--a hardness and bitterness which inspired
me both with pity and fear.

"Your fate is a perverse one," he remarked, as I did not speak.

"So! Why?"

"It throws you so provokingly into society which must be so unpleasant
to you."

"Whose society?"

"Mine, naturally."

"You are much mistaken," said I, composedly.

"It is kind of you to say so. For your sake, I wish it had been any one
but myself who had been thus thrown together with you. I promise you
faithfully that as soon as ever we can land I will only wait to see you
safely into a train and then I will leave you and--"

He was suddenly silenced. I had composed my face to an expression of
indifference as stony as I knew how to assume, and with my hands folded
in my lap, had steeled myself to look into his face and listen to him.

I could find nothing but a kind of careless mockery in his face--a hard
half smile upon his lips as he went on saying the hard things which cut
home and left me quivering, and which he yet uttered as if they had been
the most harmless pleasantries or the merest whipped-cream compliments.

It was at this moment that the wind, rising again in a brief spasm, blew
a tress of my loosened hair across his face. How it changed! flushed
crimson. His lips parted--a strange, sudden light came into his eyes.

"I beg your pardon!" said I, hastily, started from my assumed composure,
as I raised my hand to push my hair back. But he had gathered the tress
together--his hand lingered for one moment--a scarcely perceptible
moment--upon it, then he laid it gently down upon my shoulder.

"Then I will leave you," he went on, resuming the old manner, but with
evident effort, "and not interfere with you any more."

What was I to think? What to believe? I thought to myself that had he
been my lover and I had intercepted such a glance of his to another
woman my peace of mind had been gone for everm