h
full red lips that suggested unholy delights--all this the professor
noted, and he turned away his head and sighed. For all his science, he
was, after all, only a man. And, alas, he had a wife at home. Besides,
who knew better than he--the man of science--the futility of lifting
one's eyes to the stars. He fanned on in philosophic silence.

"Tell me why is it so hot?" repeated Grace, quite unconscious of the
emotions she was stirring in her bespectacled _vis-a-vis_.

"Really, I don't know," said the professor, startled out of his
reveries. Looking around at the sky, he added: "I think we're going to
have a change in the weather."

"Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed Mrs. Stuart anxiously. "What makes you think
that?"

"Well," replied the professor, scanning with the expert air of a weather
prophet the distant horizon, where the fiery sun was sinking behind a
great mass of purple cloud, "I don't much like the formation of those
clouds over there. In these latitudes they usually portend a storm of
considerable violence. The sultriness, the unnatural calm, are all storm
warnings to the sailor, and if another proof were wanted, the barometer
has been falling rapidly all day. We're sure to get something before
long."

"Anything's better than this heat," yawned Grace. "I'd love to see a big
storm, with tremendous waves washing all over the ship."

"Really, Grace, I think it's horrid of you to talk that way," protested
Mrs. Stuart, half in jest, half in earnest. "If we were wrecked or
something, it would serve you right."

"I wouldn't mind being wrecked," laughed Grace. "It would be awfully
romantic--so different from our conventional, humdrum life. Just fancy,
professor, if the ship were wrecked and you and I were cast away on a
desert island, with only monkeys, snakes, and possibly savages for
neighbors!"

"You jest, Miss Harmon," replied the professor seriously. "But such
things have occurred. Don't you remember what happened to the passengers
of the _Aeon_, when that steamer was wrecked on Christmas Island? The
survivors were ten weeks on a barren rock in the South Pacific. One
woman's hair, which was brown, without a trace of gray, when she sailed
on the _Aeon_, turned almost white, as a result of the privations and
nerve strain endured on the island."

"Yes, I remember reading about it in the papers," said Mrs. Stuart.
"Possibly she lost her hair dye in the panic."

"I'd look pretty with white hair," laughed Grace