ang include your 'Kiss Endured' among the four supreme
sonnets by women in the English language?"

"But you called me the American Mrs. Meynell!"

"Was it not true?" I demanded.

"No, not that," she answered. "I was hurt."

"We can measure the unknown only by the known," I replied, in my finest
academic manner. "As a critic I was compelled to place you. You have
now become a yardstick yourself. Seven of your thin little volumes are
on my shelves; and there are two thicker volumes, the essays, which, you
will pardon my saying, and I know not which is flattered more, fully
equal your verse. The time is not far distant when some unknown will
arise in England and the critics will name her the English Maud
Brewster."

"You are very kind, I am sure," she murmured; and the very
conventionality of her tones and words, with the host of associations it
aroused of the old life on the other side of the world, gave me a quick
thrill--rich with remembrance but stinging sharp with home-sickness.

"And you are Maud Brewster," I said solemnly, gazing across at her.

"And you are Humphrey Van Weyden," she said, gazing back at me with equal
solemnity and awe. "How unusual! I don't understand. We surely are not
to expect some wildly romantic sea-story from your sober pen."

"No, I am not gathering material, I assure you," was my answer. "I have
neither aptitude nor inclination for fiction."

"Tell me, why have you always buried yourself in California?" she next
asked. "It has not been kind of you. We of the East have seen to very
little of you--too little, indeed, of the Dean of American Letters, the
Second."

I bowed to, and disclaimed, the compliment. "I nearly met you, once, in
Philadelphia, some Browning affair or other--you were to lecture, you
know. My train was four hours late."

And then we quite forgot where we were, leaving Wolf Larsen stranded and
silent in the midst of our flood of gossip. The hunters left the table
and went on deck, and still we talked. Wolf Larsen alone remained.
Suddenly I became aware of him, leaning back from the table and listening
curiously to our alien speech of a world he did not know.

I broke short off in the middle of a sentence. The present, with all its
perils and anxieties, rushed upon me with stunning force. It smote Miss
Brewster likewise, a vague and nameless terror rushing into her eyes as
she regarded Wolf Larsen.

He rose to his feet and laughed awkwardly. T