nto the top berth
with two rheumatic legs and a crick in the back, without humor. Had he
seen the fun of himself, the fun would have meant much less to me."

"You cruel person!"

"There is often cruelty in humor--perhaps not in yours, though, yet."

"Why do you say--yet, like that?"

"The hair is such a kindly veil that I doubt the existence of cruelty
behind it."

He spoke with a sort of almost tender and paternal gentleness.

"I don't believe you could ever be really cruel, Monsieur Emile."

"Why not?"

"I think you are too intelligent."

"Why should that prevent me?"

"Isn't cruelty stupid, unimaginative?"

"Often. But it can be brilliant, artful, intellectual, full of
imagination. It can be religious. It can be passionate. It can be
splendid. It can be almost everything."

"Splendid!"

"Like Napoleon's cruelty to France. But why should I educate you in
abominable knowledge?"

"Oh," said the girl, thrusting forward her firm little chin, "I have no
faith in mere ignorance."

"Yet it does a great deal for those who are not ignorant."

"How?"

"It shows them how pretty, how beautiful even, sometimes, was the place
from which they started for their journey through the world."

Vere was silent for a moment. The sparkle of fun had died out of her
eyes, which had become dark with the steadier fires of imagination. The
strands of her thick hair, falling down on each side of her oval face,
gave to it a whimsically mediaeval look, suggestive of legend. Her
long-fingered, delicate, but strong little hands were clasped in her
lap, and did not move. It was evident that she was thinking deeply.

"I believe I know," she said, at last. "Yes, that was my thought, or
almost."

"When?"

She hesitated, looking at him, not altogether doubtfully, but with a
shadow of reserve, which might easily, he fancied, grow deeper, or fade
entirely away. He saw the resolve to speak come quietly into her mind.

"You know, Monsieur Emile, I love watching the sea," she said, rather
slowly and carefully. "Especially at dawn, and in the evening before
it is dark. And it always seems to me as if at dawn it is more heavenly
than it is after the day has happened, though it is so very lovely then.
And sometimes that has made me feel that our dawn is our most beautiful
time--as if we were nearest the truth then. And, of course, that is
when we are most ignorant, isn't it? So I suppose I have been thinking a
little bit like you. Ha