it's for us to promote the
affair."

"Well, perhaps you're right," she sighed. "I will let them alone from
this out. Thank goodness, I shall not have them under my eyes very long."

"Oh, I don't think there's any harm done yet," said her husband, with a
laugh.

At dinner there seemed so little harm of the kind he meant that she
suffered from an illogical disappointment. The young people got through
the meal with no talk that seemed inductive; Burnamy left the table
first, and Miss Triscoe bore his going without apparent discouragement;
she kept on chatting with March till his wife took him away to their
chairs on deck.

There were a few more ships in sight than there were in mid-ocean; but
the late twilight thickened over the North Sea quite like the night after
they left New York, except that it was colder; and their hearts turned to
their children, who had been in abeyance for the week past, with a
remorseful pang. "Well," she said, "I wish we were going to be in New York
to-morrow, instead of Hamburg."

"Oh, no! Oh, no!" he protested. "Not so bad as that, my dear. This is the
last night, and it's hard to manage, as the last night always is. I
suppose the last night on earth--"

"Basil!" she implored.

"Well, I won't, then. But what I want is to see a Dutch lugger. I've
never seen a Dutch lugger, and--"

She suddenly pressed his arm, and in obedience to the signal he was
silent; though it seemed afterwards that he ought to have gone on talking
as if he did not see Burnamy and Miss Triscoe swinging slowly by. They
were walking close together, and she was leaning forward and looking up
into his face while he talked.

"Now," Mrs. March whispered, long after they were out of hearing, "let us
go instantly. I wouldn't for worlds have them see us here when they get
found again. They would feel that they had to stop and speak, and that
would spoil everything. Come!"

XVII.

Burnamy paused in a flow of autobiography, and modestly waited for Miss
Triscoe's prompting. He had not to wait long.

"And then, how soon did you think of printing your things in a book?"

"Oh, about as soon as they began to take with the public."

"How could you tell that they were-taking?"

"They were copied into other papers, and people talked about them."

"And that was what made Mr. Stoller want you to be his secretary?"

"I don't believe it was. The theory in the office was that he didn't
think much of them; but he knows