ainst the vivid
light of the open doorway of the upper-deck salon. He was not watching
her, nor did he look closely at the exceedingly attractive picture which
she made as she paused there for an instant after leaving Captain Rifle.
To him she was only one of the five hundred human atoms that went to
make up the tremendously interesting life of one of the first ships of
the season going north. Fate, through the suave agency of the purser,
had brought him into a bit closer proximity to her than the others; that
was all. For two days her seat in the dining-salon had been at the same
table, not quite opposite him. As she had missed both breakfast hours,
and he had skipped two luncheons, the requirements of neighborliness and
of courtesy had not imposed more than a dozen words of speech upon them.
This was very satisfactory to Alan. He was not talkative or
communicative of his own free will. There was a certain cynicism back of
his love of silence. He was a good listener and a first-rate analyst.
Some people, he knew, were born to talk; and others, to trim the
balance, were burdened with the necessity of holding their tongues. For
him silence was not a burden.

In his cool and causal way he admired Mary Standish. She was very
quiet, and he liked her because of that. He could not, of course, escape
the beauty of her eyes or the shimmering luster of the long lashes that
darkened them. But these were details which did not thrill him, but
merely pleased him. And her hair pleased him possibly even more than her
gray eyes, though he was not sufficiently concerned to discuss the
matter with himself. But if he had pointed out any one thing, it would
have been her hair--not so much the color of it as the care she
evidently gave it, and the manner in which she dressed it. He noted that
it was dark, with varying flashes of luster in it under the dinner
lights. But what he approved of most of all were the smooth, silky coils
in which she fastened it to her pretty head. It was an intense relief
after looking on so many frowsy heads, bobbed and marcelled, during his
six months' visit in the States. So he liked her, generally speaking,
because there was not a thing about her that he might dislike.

He did not, of course, wonder what the girl might be thinking of
him--with his quiet, stern face, his cold indifference, his rather
Indian-like litheness, and the single patch of gray that streaked his
thick, blond hair. His interest had not r