lu, _en route_ for San Francisco.

Bit by bit, however, the cocoanut palms, silhouetted with their graceful
waving arms for a few brief minutes in black against the glowing
background, merged slowly into the sky or sank below the horizon. All
grew dark. One by one, as the trees disappeared, the passengers dropped
off for whist in the saloon, or retired to the uneasy solitude of their
own state-rooms. At last only two or three men were left smoking and
chatting near the top of the companion ladder; while at the stern of the
ship Muriel Ellis looked over toward the retreating island, and talked
with a certain timid maidenly frankness to Felix Thurstan.

There's nowhere on earth for getting really to know people in a very
short time like the deck of a great Atlantic or Pacific liner. You're
thrown together so much, and all day long, that you see more of your
fellow-passengers' inner life and nature in a few brief weeks than you
would ever be likely to see in a long twelvemonth of ordinary town or
country acquaintanceship. And Muriel Ellis had seen a great deal in those
thirteen days of Felix Thurstan; enough to make sure in her own heart
that she really liked him--well--so much that she looked up with a pretty
blush of self-consciousness every time he approached and lifted his hat
to her. Muriel was an English rector's daughter, from a country village
in Somersetshire; and she was now on her way back from a long year's
visit, to recruit her health, to an aunt in Paramatta. She was travelling
under the escort of an amiable old chaperon whom the aunt in question had
picked up for her before leaving Sydney; but, as the amiable old
chaperon, being but an indifferent sailor, spent most of her time in her
own berth, closely attended by the obliging stewardess, Muriel had found
her chaperonage interfere very little with opportunities of talk with
that nice Mr. Thurstan. And now, as the last glow of sunset died out in
the western sky, and the last palm-tree faded away against the colder
green darkness of the tropical night, Muriel was leaning over the
bulwarks in confidential mood, and watching the big waves advance or
recede, and talking the sort of talk that such an hour seems to favor
with the handsome young civil servant who stood on guard, as it were,
beside her. For Felix Thurstan held a government appointment at Levuka,
in Fiji, and was now on his way home, on leave of absence after six
years' service in that new-made colon