ax was afraid she might have
fainted again.

"Are you all right?" he asked anxiously, bending toward her from his low
seat on the suitcase.

She opened her eyes with a slight start, as if she had waked, half
dazed, from some unfinished dream.

"Oh, yes," she said. "I was making a picture, in a way I have. I was
wondering what would happen to us, in our different paths, and trying to
see. One of my aunts says it is 'Celtic' to do that. I saw you in a
great waste-place, like a desert. And then--_I_ was there, too. We were
together--all alone. Perhaps, although I didn't know it, I'd really
fallen asleep."

"Perhaps," agreed Max, and a vague thrill ran through him. He, too, had
dreamed of desert as he lay in the lower berth, and she, overhead, had
dreamed a desert dream, each unknown to the other. "Try to go to sleep
again."

She closed her eyes, and presently he thought that she slept. Once or
twice she waked with the heave and jolt of a great wave, always to find
her watchdog at hand.

But at last, when with the dawn the storm lulled, Max noiselessly
switched off the light and went out.

CHAPTER VI

THE NEWS

It was after breakfast when they met once more, on a wet deck, in bleak
sunshine.

"I waked up in broad daylight and found you and your suitcase gone,"
said the girl. "Oh, how guilty I felt! And then to discover that, just
as you thought, the cabin _was_ 63, not 65. What became of you?"

"I was all right," replied Max evasively. "I got a place to rest and
wash."

"In 65?"

"No, not there."

"Why, was there a woman in that cabin, _too_?"

Max laughed. It was good to have some one to laugh with. "I didn't dare
look," he confessed. "And I didn't care to wander about explaining
myself and my belongings to suspicious stewards."

They walked up and down the deck, shoulder to shoulder, like old
comrades. Last night there had been so many matters more pressing and
more important, that they had forgotten such trifles as names. Now they
introduced themselves to each other, though Max had an instant's
hesitation before calling himself Doran. To-morrow, or even to-day, he
might learn that which would part him forever from the name and all that
had endeared and adorned it for him.

"Do you know what I've been calling you?" the girl asked, half ashamed,
half shyly friendly, "'St. George.' Because you came and saved me from
the dragon of the sea that I was afraid of. And that was appropriate,
becau