W

XXVII

I should think few men ever loved more passionately, yet picturesquely,
than I loved those two beautiful stepsisters when for their sakes I
started out upon a criminal, motor-boating career.

To have their society, to gaze daily upon their lovely faces, to hear
their charming voices, and to find out which girl I really loved more
than the other, I willingly stole an aunt and then lied about her so
often, that eventually I almost began to believe she was my aunt.
Perhaps--I said to myself, when any barking dogs escaped from the kennel
of my conscience to be soothed--perhaps she had been my aunt in another
state of existence. But then, I would have said anything about her, to
myself or others, by way of furthering the cause; and the game was well
worth the candle--for the first part of the trip.

Alb being frankly and openly a worshiper of the adorable Nell Van Buren,
my own countrywoman, I saw that, out of all the girls I ever loved,
including her stepsister, she was the only one it would be impossible
for me to live without.

That state of mind lasted up to the night when we arrived at the deadest
of all Dead Cities of the Zuider Zee, Enkhuisen. There it broke upon me
out of a clear sky that my Burne-Jones angel, Phyllis Rivers, loved and
was loved by, another; that other, a graven image of a Viking, who could
never appreciate her as she deserved.

Until the blow fell, I had always, half unconsciously, felt that she was
there; that if I lost the incomparable Nell, the exquisite Phyllis was
on the spot to console me; and she is at her best as a consoler. But
suddenly, at a moment when I was soaked with rain, snubbed by Nell, as
well as foolishly concerned about the fate of that white man's burden,
my Albatross, and altogether ill-fitted to bear further misfortunes, I
learnt that Phyllis regarded me as a brother.

I hid my chagrin in sympathy for hers, but Phyllis in tears proved
distracting. She is the one girl I have ever seen who can cry without a
deplorable redness of the nose. Tears rolled like pearls over her lower
lashes, which are almost as long as the fringe of the upper lids, and I
wondered how I could ever have thought another girl more desirable. Too
late for my comfort did she assure me that, in her opinion, my case was
not hopeless with her stepsister. It was Phyllis, not Nell, whom I now
wished to snatch from the arms of a hated rival (not that she was in
them yet, but she might be