ore wine than he had meant to.
When he went above, the wind had risen and the deck was almost deserted.
As he stepped out of the door a gale lifted his heavy fur coat about
his shoulders. He fought his way up the deck with keen exhilaration.
The moment he stepped, almost out of breath, behind the shelter of the
stern, the wind was cut off, and he felt, like a rush of warm air, a
sense of close and intimate companionship. He started back and tore his
coat open as if something warm were actually clinging to him beneath it.
He hurried up the deck and went into the saloon parlor, full of women
who had retreated thither from the sharp wind. He threw himself upon
them. He talked delightfully to the older ones and played accompaniments
for the younger ones until the last sleepy girl had followed her mother
below. Then he went into the smoking-room. He played bridge until two
o'clock in the morning, and managed to lose a considerable sum of money
without really noticing that he was doing so.

After the break of one fine day the weather was pretty consistently
dull. When the low sky thinned a trifle, the pale white spot of a sun
did no more than throw a bluish lustre on the water, giving it the dark
brightness of newly cut lead. Through one after another of those gray
days Alexander drowsed and mused, drinking in the grateful moisture. But
the complete peace of the first part of the voyage was over. Sometimes
he rose suddenly from his chair as if driven out, and paced the deck for
hours. People noticed his propensity for walking in rough weather, and
watched him curiously as he did his rounds. From his abstraction and the
determined set of his jaw, they fancied he must be thinking about his
bridge. Every one had heard of the new cantilever bridge in Canada.

But Alexander was not thinking about his work. After the fourth night
out, when his will suddenly softened under his hands, he had been
continually hammering away at himself. More and more often, when he
first wakened in the morning or when he stepped into a warm place after
being chilled on the deck, he felt a sudden painful delight at being
nearer another shore. Sometimes when he was most despondent, when he
thought himself worn out with this struggle, in a flash he was free
of it and leaped into an overwhelming consciousness of himself. On the
instant he felt that marvelous return of the impetuousness, the intense
excitement, the increasing expectancy of youth.

CHA