Mrs. McGovern's kindly
counsel, and, occupied with my own somewhat unhappy reflections, I
resigned myself to the monotony of the voyage up the Missouri River. We
plowed along steadily, although laboriously, all night, all the next day
and the next night, passing through regions rich in forest growth,
marked here and there by the many clearings of the advancing settlers.
We were by this time far above the junction of the Missouri River with
the Mississippi--a point traceable by a long line of discolored water
stained with the erosion of the mountains and plains far up the
Missouri. As the boat advanced, hour after hour, finally approaching the
prairie country beyond the Missouri forests, I found little in the
surroundings to occupy my mind; and so far as my communings with myself
were concerned, they offered little satisfaction. A sort of shuddering
self-reproach overcame me. I wondered whether or not I was less coarse,
less a thing polygamous than these crowding Mormons hurrying out to
their sodden temples in the West, because now (since I have volunteered
in these pages to tell the truth regarding one man's heart), I must
admit that in the hours of dusk I found myself dreaming not of my
fiancee back in old Virginia, but of other women seen more recently. As
to the girl of the masked ball, I admitted that she was becoming a
fading memory; but this young girl who had thrust through the crowd and
broken up our proceedings the other day--the girl with the white lawn
gown and the silver gray veil and the tear-stained eyes--in some way, as
I was angrily obliged to admit, her face seemed annoyingly to thrust
itself again into my consciousness. I sat near a deck lamp. Grace
Sheraton's letter was in my pocket. I did not draw it out to read it
and re-read it. I contented myself with watching the masked shadows on
the shores. I contented myself with dreams, dreams which I stigmatized
as unwarranted and wrong.

We were running that night in the dark, before the rising of the moon, a
thing which cautious steamboat men would not have ventured, although our
pilot was confident that no harm could come to him. Against assurance
such as this the dangerous Missouri with its bars and snags purposed a
present revenge. Our whistle awakened the echoes along the shores as we
plowed on up the yellow flood, hour after hour. Then, some time toward
midnight, while most of the passengers were attempting some sort of
rest, wrapped in their blankets