you could write splendid stories."

"That was not my exact thought," he replied, resolutely pulling himself
together. "But it will serve." By George! he thought, that was close
enough.

She did not ask him what his exact thought was, but she suspected it.
There was a little shock of pleasure and disappointment; the one rising
from the fact that he had stopped where he did and the other that he
had not gone on. And she grew angry over this second expression. She
liked him; she had never met a young man whom she liked more. But
liking is never loving, and her heart was as free and unburdened as the
wind. As once remarked, many of the men with whom she had come into
contact had been bred in idleness, and her interest in them had never
gone above friendly tolerance. Her admiration was for men, young or
old, who cut their way roughly through the world's great obstacles, who
achieved things in pioneering, in history, in science; and she admired
them because they were rather difficult to draw out, being more
familiar with startling journeys, wildernesses, strange peoples, than
with the gilded metaphors of the drawing-room.

And here were three of them to meet daily, to study and to ponder over.
And types as far apart as the three points of a triangle; the man at
her side, young, witty, agreeable; Cathewe, grave, kindly, and
sometimes rather saturnine; Breitmann, proud and reserved; and each of
them having rung true in some great crisis. If ever she loved a
man . . . The thought remained unfinished and she glanced up and met
Fitzgerald's eyes. They were sad, with the line of a frown above them.
How was she to keep him under hand, and still erect an impassable
barrier! It was the first time she had given the matter serious
thought. The joy of the sea underfoot, the tang of the rushing air,
the journey's end, these had occupied her volatile young mind. But now!

"I am dull," said he gloomily.

"Thank you!"

"I mean that I am stupid, doubly stupid," he corrected.

"Cricket will be a cure for that."

"I doubt it," approaching dangerous ground once more.

"Let's go and talk to Captain Flanagan, then."

"There!" with sudden spirit, "the very thing I've been wanting!"'

It was of no importance that they both knew this to be a prevarication
about which St. Peter would not trouble his hoary head nor take the
pains to indite in his great book of demerits.

But all through that bright day the girl thought, and t