always dirty, with your hair in ropes and your face bloused by the
wind--to say nothing of icebergs and fogs and the cargo of cotton goods
catching fire, and the wheezing mediaeval boilers bursting and sending
you all to glory--"

I paused for lack of breath. Liosha, who, elbows on table and chin on
hands, had listened to me, first with amusement, then with absorbed
interest, and lastly with glowing rapture, cried in a shaky voice:

"I should love it! I should love it!"

"But it's lunatic," said I.

"So much the better."

"But the proprieties."

She shifted her position, threw herself back in her chair, and flung out
her hands towards me.

"You ought to be keeping Mrs. Jardine's boarding-house. What have Jaff
Chayne and I to do with proprieties? Didn't he and I travel from Scutari
to London?"

"Yes," said I. "But aren't things just a little bit different now?"

It was a searching question. Her swift change of expression from glow to
defensive sombreness admitted its significance.

"Nothing is different," she said curtly. "Things are exactly the same."
She bent forward and looked at me straight from beneath lowering brows.
"If you think just because he and I are good friends now there's any
difference, you're making a great mistake. And just you tell Barbara
that."

"I will do so--" said I.

"And you can also tell her," she continued, "that Liosha Prescott is not
going to let herself be made a fool of by a man who's crazy mad over
another woman. No, sirree! Not this child. Not me. And as for the
proprieties"--she snapped her fingers--"they be--they be anything'd!"

To this frank exposition of her feelings I could say nothing. I drank
the remainder of my absinthe and lit a cigarette. I fell back on the
manifest lunacy of the Madagascar voyage. I urged, somewhat
anti-climatically after my impassioned harangue, its discomfort.

"You'll be the fifth wheel to a coach. Your petticoats, my dear, will
always be in the way."

"I needn't wear petticoats," said Liosha.

We argued until a red, grinning Jaffery, beaming like the fiery sun now
about to set, appeared winding his way through the tables, followed by
the black-bearded, grey-eyed sea captain.

"It's all fixed up," said he, taking his seat. "The Cap'en understands
the whole position. If you want to come to 'Jerusalem and Madagascar and
North and South Amerikee,' come."

"But this is midsummer madness," said I.

"Suppose it is, what matter?" He wave