at the gangway, and you looked at me," he answered.

"But..."

"It's no use butting," he said. "I'm like that.... That's me, that is."

It was the bare truth that he had staggered himself. But he had
staggered himself into a miraculous, ecstatic happiness. She had no
money, no clothes, no style, no experience, no particular gifts. But she
was she. And when he looked at her, calmed, he knew that he had done
well for himself. He knew that if he had not yielded to that terrific
impulse he would have done badly for himself. Mrs Machin had what she
called a ticklish night of it.

VI

The next day he received a note from Ruth, dated Southport, inquiring
how he came to lose her on the landing-stage, and expressing concern. It
took him three days to reply, and even then the reply was a bad one. He
had behaved infamously to Ruth; so much could not be denied. Within
three hours of practically proposing to her, he had run off with a
simple girl, who was not fit to hold a candle to her. And he did not
care. That was the worst of it; he did not care.

Of course the facts reached her. The facts reached everybody; for the
singular reappearance of Nellie in the streets of Bursley immediately
after her departure for Canada had to be explained. Moreover, the
infamous Denry was rather proud of the facts. And the town inevitably
said: "Machin all over, that! Snatching the girl off the blooming
lugger. Machin all over." And Denry agreed privately that it was Machin
all over.

"What other chap," he demanded of the air, "would have thought of it? Or
had the pluck?..."

It was mere malice on the part of destiny that caused Denry to run
across Mrs Capron-Smith at Euston some weeks later. Happily they both
had immense nerve.

"Dear me," said she. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"Only honeymooning," he said.

CHAPTER XI

IN THE ALPS

I

Although Denry was extremely happy as a bridegroom, and capable of the
most foolish symptoms of affection in private, he said to himself, and
he said to Nellie (and she sturdily agreed with him): "We aren't going
to be the ordinary silly honeymooners." By which, of course, he meant
that they would behave so as to be taken for staid married persons. They
failed thoroughly in this enterprise as far as London, where they spent
a couple of nights, but on leaving Charing Cross they made a new and a
better start, in the light of experience.

Their destination, it need hardly be said, was Swit