"

* * * * *

At the dinner-party that evening was the young American who was engaged
to the girl at Smith College.

"I saw you walking with Von Ibn this afternoon," he said to Rosina as
they chanced together during the coffee-and-cigarette period.

"Where?" she asked. "I don't remember seeing you anywhere."

"No; he appeared to engross you pretty thoroughly. I feel that I ought
to warn you."

"What about?"

"He isn't a bit popular."

"Poor man!"

"None of the men ever have anything to do with him; you never see him
with any one, and it's odd, because he talks English awfully well."

"What do you suppose they have against him?"

"Oh, nothing in particular, I guess, only they don't like him. He isn't
interesting to any one."

"Oh, there I beg to differ with you," she said quickly; "I saw him speak
to some one to-day who I am sure found him very interesting indeed."

"Who was it?"

"Myself."

Chapter Four

"Have you ever thought what is love and what is passion?"

It was the man who spoke as they leaned against the rail of that
afternoon steamer which is scheduled to make port at the Quai by seven
o'clock, at the Gare by seven-ten.

Rosina simply shook her head.

"I am going to tell you that," he said, turning his dark gaze down upon
the shadows in the wake behind them; "we part perhaps this night, and I
have a fancy to talk of just that. Perhaps it will come that we never
meet again, but when you love you will think of what I have say."

"I never shall love," she said thoughtfully.

He did not appear to hear her at all.

"It is as this," he said, his eyes glowing into the tossing foam below:
"many may love, and there may be very many loves; very few can know a
passion, and they can know but one. You may love, and have it for one
that is quite of another rank or all of another world, but one has a
passion only for what one may hope for one's own. Love, that is a
feeling, a something of the heart,"--he touched his bosom as he spoke
but never raised his eyes,--"what I may have known,--or you. But
passion, that is only half a feeling, and the other half must be in some
other, or if it be not there it must be of a force put there, because
with passion there _must_ be two, and one _must_ find the other and
possess the other; that other heart must be, and must be won, and be
your own, and be your own all alone." He paused a moment and took out
his cigarette ca