ty brown hair, and a small amused
mouth, and an impudent nose. I kept staring until she flushed.

"I'm sorry," I said quickly. "I--was startled."

There's a friendly atmosphere aboard a trans-oceanic rocket. The
passengers are forced into a crowded intimacy for anywhere from seven to
twelve hours, and there isn't much room for moving about. Generally, one
strikes up an acquaintance with his neighbors; introductions aren't at
all necessary, and the custom is simply to speak to anybody you
choose--something like an all-day trip on the railroad trains of the
last century, I suppose. You make friends for the duration of the
journey, and then, nine times out of ten, you never hear of your
traveling companions again.

The girl smiled. "Are you the individual responsible for the delay in
starting?"

I admitted it. "I seem to be chronically late. Even watches lose time as
soon as I wear them."

She laughed. "Your responsibilities can't be very heavy."

Well, they weren't of course, though it's surprising how many clubs,
caddies, and chorus girls have depended on me at various times for
appreciable portions of their incomes. But somehow I didn't feel like
mentioning those things to the silvery-eyed girl.

We talked. Her name, it developed, was Joanna Caldwell, and she was
going as far as Paris. She was an artist, or hoped to be one day, and of
course there is no place in the world that can supply both training and
inspiration like Paris. So it was there she was bound for a year of
study, and despite her demurely humorous lips and laughing eyes, I could
see that the business was of vast importance to her. I gathered that she
had worked hard for the year in Paris, had scraped and saved for three
years as fashion illustrator for some woman's magazine, though she
couldn't have been many months over twenty-one. Her painting meant a
great deal to her, and I could understand it. I'd felt that way about
polo once.

So you see, we were sympathetic spirits from the beginning. I knew that
she liked me, and it was obvious that she didn't connect Dixon Wells
with the N. J. Wells Corporation. And as for me--well, after that first
glance into her cool silver eyes, I simply didn't care to look anywhere
else. The hours seemed to drip away like minutes while I watched her.

You know how those things go. Suddenly I was calling her Joanna and she
was calling me Dick, and it seemed as if we'd been doing just that all
our lives. I'd decide