casual
glance at the little man's hands, neither would he have had any. He
determined to prod M. Ferraud. He was well trained in repression; so,
while he often lost patience, there was never any external sign of it.
Besides, there was another affair which over-shadowed it and at times
engulfed it.

Love. The cross-tides of sense and sentiment made a pretty
disturbance. And still further, there was another counter-tide. Love
does not necessarily make a young man keen-sighted, but it generally
highly develops his talent for suspicion. By subtle gradations,
Breitmann had shifted in Fitzgerald's mind from a possible friend to a
probable rival. Breitmann did not now court his society when the
smoking bouts came round, or when the steward brought the whisky and
soda after the ladies had retired. Breitmann was moody, and whatever
variance his moods had, they retained the gray tone. This Fitzgerald
saw and dilated upon; and it rankled when he thought that this
hypothetical adventurer had rights, level and equal to his, always
supposing he had any.

In this state of mind he drooped idly over the rail as the yacht drew
out of the bay, the evening of the second day. The glories of the
southern sunset lingered and vanished, a-begging, without his senses
being roused by them; and long after the sea, chameleon-like, changed
from rose to lavender, from lavender to gray, the mountains yet
jealously clung to their vivid aureolas of phantom gold. Fitzgerald
saw nothing but writing on the water.

"Well, my boy," said Cathewe, lounging affectionately against
Fitzgerald, "here we are, rolled over again."

"What?"

Cathewe described a circle with his finger lazily.

"Oh!" said Fitzgerald, listless. "Another day more or less, crowded
into the past, doesn't matter."

"Maybe. If we could only have the full days and deposit the others and
draw as we need them; but we can't do it. And yet each day means
something; there ought always to be a little of it worth remembering."

"Old parson!" cried Fitzgerald, with a jab of his elbow.

"All bally rot, eh? I wish I could look at it that way. Yet, when a
man mopes as you are doing, when this sunset. . ."

"New one every day."

"What's the difficulty, Jack?"

"Am I walking around with a sign on my back?" testily.

"Of a kind, yes."

Cathewe spoke so solemnly that Fitzgerald looked round, and saw that
which set his ears burning. Immediately he lowered his gaze and soug