you're so tired now that you can hardly stand."

"And you?" I said, with sudden solicitude. "You must be very tired. You
have worked hard and nobly. I am proud of you, Maud."

"Not half so proud as I am of you, nor with half the reason," she
answered, looking me straight in the eyes for a moment with an expression
in her own and a dancing, tremulous light which I had not seen before and
which gave me a pang of quick delight, I know not why, for I did not
understand it. Then she dropped her eyes, to lift them again, laughing.

"If our friends could see us now," she said. "Look at us. Have you ever
paused for a moment to consider our appearance?"

"Yes, I have considered yours, frequently," I answered, puzzling over
what I had seen in her eyes and puzzled by her sudden change of subject.

"Mercy!" she cried. "And what do I look like, pray?"

"A scarecrow, I'm afraid," I replied. "Just glance at your draggled
skirts, for instance. Look at those three-cornered tears. And such a
waist! It would not require a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that you have
been cooking over a camp-fire, to say nothing of trying out seal-blubber.
And to cap it all, that cap! And all that is the woman who wrote 'A Kiss
Endured.'"

She made me an elaborate and stately courtesy, and said, "As for you,
sir--"

And yet, through the five minutes of banter which followed, there was a
serious something underneath the fun which I could not but relate to the
strange and fleeting expression I had caught in her eyes. What was it?
Could it be that our eyes were speaking beyond the will of our speech?
My eyes had spoken, I knew, until I had found the culprits out and
silenced them. This had occurred several times. But had she seen the
clamour in them and understood? And had her eyes so spoken to me? What
else could that expression have meant--that dancing, tremulous light, and
a something more which words could not describe. And yet it could not
be. It was impossible. Besides, I was not skilled in the speech of
eyes. I was only Humphrey Van Weyden, a bookish fellow who loved. And
to love, and to wait and win love, that surely was glorious enough for
me. And thus I thought, even as we chaffed each other's appearance,
until we arrived ashore and there were other things to think about.

"It's a shame, after working hard all day, that we cannot have an
uninterrupted night's sleep," I complained, after supper.

"But there can be no dang