remembered that by early daylight he might have read it for
nothing; and so, for economic penance, smoked to the bitter end, finding
the cigar disagreeable but manly. At all events, homesickness had
vanished in a curious impatience for the morrow. Miss Forrester: he
would sit beside Miss Forrester at table. If only they both were
traveling first-class!--then she might be a great lady. To be enamored
of a countess, now--A cigar, after all, was the proper companion of
bold thoughts.

At breakfast, recalling her amusement, he remained silent and wooden. At
tiffin his heart leaped.

"You speak English, I'm sure, don't you?" Miss Forrester was saying, in
a pleasant, rather drawling voice. Her eyes were quite serious now, and
indeed friendly. Confusion seized him.

"I have less English to amuse myself with the ladies," he answered
wildly. Next moment, however, he regained that painful mastery of the
tongue which had won his promotion as agent, and stammered: "Pardon. I
would mean, I speak so badly as not to entertain her."

"Indeed, you speak very nicely," she rejoined, with such a smile as no
woman had ever troubled to bestow on him. "That will be so pleasant,
for my German is shocking."

Dazed by the compliment, by her manner of taking for granted that future
conversation which had seemed too good to come true, but above all by
her arch, provoking smile, Rudolph sat with his head in a whirl, feeling
that the wide eyes of all the second-cabiners were penetrating the
tumultuous secret of his breast. Again his English deserted, and left
him stammering. But Miss Forrester chatted steadily, appeared to
understand murmurs which he himself found obscure, and so restored his
confidence that before tiffin was over he talked no less gayly, his
honest face alight and glowing. She taught him the names of the strange
fruits before them; but though listening and questioning eagerly, he
could not afterward have told loquat from pumelo, or custard-apple
from papaya.

Nor could this young man, of methodical habits, ever have told how long
their voyage lasted. It passed, unreal and timeless, in a glorious mist,
a delighted fever: the background a blur of glossy white bulkheads and
iron rails, awnings that fluttered in the warm, languorous winds, an
infinite tropic ocean poignantly blue; the foreground, Miss Forrester.
Her white figure, trim and dashing; her round blue eyes, filled with coy
wonder, the arch innocence of a spoiled child