from behind a curtain, or
let me turn my back upon you, and you may expect to hear work-a-day
prose--but face to face, I fear that you must put up with compliment."

"A neat way of saying that you have had enough of me. Your compliments
are two-edged. Good-bye for the present." And she rose, leaving Arthur
--well, rather amused.

After this they saw a good deal of each other--that is to say, they
conversed together for at least thirty minutes out of every sixty
during an average day of fourteen hours, and in the course of these
conversations she learned nearly everything about him, except his
engagement to Angela, and she shrewdly guessed at that, or, rather, at
some kindred circumstance in his career. Arthur, on the other hand,
learned quite everything about her, for her life was open as the day,
and would have borne repeating in the _Times_ newspaper. But
nevertheless he found it extremely interesting.

"You must be a busy woman," he said one morning, when he had been
listening to one of her rattling accounts of her travels and gaieties,
sprinkled over, as it was, with the shrewd remarks, and illumined by
the keen insight into character that made her talk so charming.

"Busy, no; one of the idlest in the world, and a very worthless one to
boot," she answered, with a little sigh.

"Then, why don't you change your life? it is in your own hands, if
ever anybody's was."

"Do you think so? I doubt if anybody's life is in their own hands. We
follow an appointed course; if we did not, it would be impossible to
understand why so many sensible, clever people make such a complete
mess of their existence. They can't do it from choice."

"At any rate, you have not made a mess of yours, and your appointed
course seems a very pleasant one."

"Yes; and the sea beneath us is very smooth, but it has been rough
before, and will be rough again--there is no stability in the sea. As
to making a mess of my life, who knows what I may not accomplish in
that way? Prosperity cannot shine down fear of the future, it only
throws it into darker relief. Myself I am afraid of the future--it is
unknown, and to me what is unknown is not magnificent, but terrible.
The present is enough for me. I do not like speculation, and I never
loved the dark."

And, as they talked, Madeira, in all its summer glory, loomed up out
of the ocean, for they had passed the "Desertas" and "Porto Santo" by
night, and for a while they were lost in the contemplat