ing. She exploits her soul
as her husband exploits the globe. There isn't a sensation or an
emotion she denies herself--unless it is painful. It was to escape the
concert that she has left her couch--and sought refuge in a friend's
cabin. You see, here sound travels straight from the dining-hall, and
a false note, she says, gives her nerve-ache.'

'Then she can't return till the close of the concert,' he said
eagerly. 'Won't you come outside and walk a bit under this beautiful
moon?'

She came out without a word, with the simplicity of a comrade.

'Yes, it is a beautiful night,' she said, 'and very soon I shall be in
Russia.'

'But is Mrs. Wilhammer going to Russia, then?' he asked, with a sudden
thought, wondering that it had never occurred to him before.

'Of course not! I only joined her for this voyage. I have to work my
passage, you see, and Providence, on the eve of sailing, robbed Mrs.
Wilhammer of her maid.'

'Oh!' he murmured in relief. His red-haired muse was going back to
her social pedestal. 'But you must have found it humiliating,' he
said.

'Humiliating?' She laughed cheerfully. 'Why more than manicuring her?'

The muse shivered again on the pedestal.

'Manicuring?' he echoed in dismay.

'Sure!' she laughed in American. 'When, after a course of starvation
and medicine at Berne University, I found I had to get a new degree
for America....'

'You are a doctor?' he interrupted.

'And, therefore, peculiarly serviceable as a ship-maid.'

She smiled again, and her smile in the moonlight reminded him of a
rippling passage of Chopin. Prosaic enough, however, was what she went
on to tell him of her struggle for life by day and for learning by
night. 'Of course, I could only attend the night medical school. I
lived by lining cloaks with fur; my bed was the corner of a room
inhabited by a whole family. A would-be graduate could not be seen
with bundles; for fetching and carrying the work my good landlady
extorted twenty cents to the dollar. When the fur season was slack I
cooked in a restaurant, worked a typewriter, became a "hello girl"--at
a telephone, you know--reported murder cases--anything, everything.'

'Manicuring,' he recalled tenderly.

'Manicuring,' she repeated smilingly. 'And you ask me if it is
humiliating to wait upon an artistic sea-sick lady!'

'Artistic!' he sneered. His heart was full of pity and indignation.

'As surely as sea-sick!' she rejoined laughingly. 'Why are you
pre