with folded wings,
The bird that left it sits and sings."

I paused; the occasion seemed so little suited to the sentiment, for
around us was the idle excitement of leaving port. I was annoyed with
myself for my share in the conversation so far. Mrs. Falchion's eyes
had scarcely left that group around the captain's door, although she had
appeared acutely interested in what I was saying. Now she said:

"You recite very well. I feel impressed, but I fancy it is more your
voice than those fine sentiments; for, after all, you cannot glorify
the dead body. Look at the mummy of Thothmes at Boulak, and think what
Cleopatra must look like now. And please let us talk about something
else. Let us--" She paused.

I followed the keen, shaded glance of her eyes, and saw, coming from
the group by the captain's door, Galt Roscoe. He moved in our direction.
Suddenly he paused. His look was fixed upon Mrs. Falchion. A flush
passed over his face, not exactly confusing, but painful, and again
it left him pale, and for a moment he stood motionless. Then he came
forward to us. He bowed to me, then looked hard at her. She held out her
hand.

"Mr. Roscoe, I think?" she said. "An old friend," she added, turning to
me. He gravely took her extended hand and said:

"I did not think to see you here, Miss--"

"MRS. Falchion," she interrupted clearly.

"MRS. Falchion!" he said, with surprise. "It is so many years since we
had met, and--"

"And it is so easy to forget things? But it isn't so many, really--only
seven, the cycle for constitutional renewal. Dear me, how erudite that
sounds!... So, I suppose, we meet the same, yet not the same."

"The same, yet not the same," he repeated after her, with an attempt at
lightness, yet abstractedly.

"I think you gentlemen know each other?" she said.

"Yes; we met in the cemetery this morning. I was visiting the grave of a
young French officer."

"I know," she said--"Justine Caron's brother. She has told me; but she
did not tell me your name."

"She has told you?" he said.

"Yes. She is--my companion." I saw that she did not use the word that
first came to her.

"How strangely things occur! And yet," he added musingly, "I suppose,
after all, coincidence is not so strange in these days of much travel,
particularly with people whose lives are connected--more or less."

"Whose lives are connected--more or less," she repeated after him, in a
steely tone.

It seemed to me that I ha