to gossip; but Stephen felt a pleasant
confidence that Nevill Caird would know how to protect him from such
people. He would not have to meet many strangers. Nevill would arrange
all that, and give him plenty to think about during his weeks of
freedom.

Algiers seemed a remote place to Stephen, who had loved life at home too
passionately to care for foreign travel. Besides, there was always a
great deal to do in England at every season of the year, and it had been
difficult to find a time convenient for getting away. Town engagements
began early in the spring, and lasted till after Cowes, when he was keen
for Scotland. Being a gregarious as well as an idle young man, he was
pleased with his own popularity, and the number of his invitations for
country-house visits. He could never accept more than half, but even so,
he hardly saw London until January; and then, if he went abroad at all,
there was only time for a few days in Paris, and a fortnight on the
Riviera, perhaps, before he found that he must get back. Just after
leaving Oxford, before his father's death, he had been to Rome, to
Berlin, and Vienna, and returned better satisfied than ever with his own
capital; but of course it was different now that the capital was
dissatisfied with him.

He had chosen the night train and it was not crowded. All the way to
Dover he had the compartment to himself, and there was no rush for the
boat. It was a night of stars and balmy airs; but after the start the
wind freshened, and Stephen walked briskly up and down the deck,
shivering slightly at first, till his blood warmed. By and by it grew so
cold that the deck emptied, save for half a dozen men with pipes that
glowed between turned-up coat collars, and one girl in a blue serge
dress, with no other cloak than the jacket that matched her frock.
Stephen hardly noticed her at first, but as men buttoned their coats or
went below, and she remained, his attention was attracted to the slim
figure leaning on the rail. Her face was turned away, looking over the
sea where the whirling stars dipped into dark waves that sprang to
engulf them. Her elbows rested on the railing, and her chin lay in the
cup of her two hands; but her hair, under a blue sailor-hat held down
with a veil, hung low in a great looped-up plait, tied with a wide black
ribbon, so that Stephen, without wasting much thought upon her, guessed
that she must be very young. It was red hair, gleaming where the light
touche