f the bridge and nostrils
conveyed an indescribable advertisement of race and blood.

Hers was a slender-lipped, sensitive, sensible, and generous
mouth--generous, not so much in size, which was quite average, but
generous rather in tolerance, in power, and in laughter. All the health
and buoyancy of her was in her mouth, as well as in her eyes. She rarely
exposed her teeth in smiling, for which purpose she seemed chiefly to
employ her eyes; but when she laughed she showed strong white teeth,
even, not babyish in their smallness, but just the firm, sensible, normal
size one would expect in a woman as healthy and normal as she.

I would never have called her beautiful, and yet she possessed many of
the factors that go to compose feminine beauty. She had all the beauty
of colouring, a white skin that was healthy white and that was emphasized
by the darkness of her lashes, brows, and hair. And, in the same way,
the darkness of lashes and brows and the whiteness of skin set off the
warm gray of her eyes. The forehead was, well, medium-broad and medium
high, and quite smooth. No lines nor hints of lines were there,
suggestive of nervousness, of blue days of depression and white nights of
insomnia. Oh, she bore all the marks of the healthy, human female, who
never worried nor was vexed in the spirit of her, and in whose body every
process and function was frictionless and automatic.

"Miss West has posed to me as quite a weather prophet," I said to the
mate. "Now what is your forecast of our coming weather?"

"She ought to be," was Mr. Pike's reply as he lifted his glance across
the smooth swell of sea to the sky. "This ain't the first time she's
been on the North Atlantic in winter." He debated a moment, as he
studied the sea and sky. "I should say, considering the high barometer,
we ought to get a mild gale from the north-east or a calm, with the
chances in favour of the calm."

She favoured me with a triumphant smile, and suddenly clutched the rail
as the _Elsinore_ lifted on an unusually large swell and sank into the
trough with a roll from windward that flapped all the sails in hollow
thunder.

"The calm has it," Miss West said, with just a hint of grimness. "And if
this keeps up I'll be in my bunk in about five minutes."

She waved aside all sympathy. "Oh, don't bother about me, Mr. Pathurst.
Sea-sickness is only detestable and horrid, like sleet, and muddy
weather, and poison ivy; besides, I'd rathe