bade me good-bye. She must retire early. The
rearrangement of her luggage--"dunnage," I corrected--would be a lengthy
process. She thanked me, in her best Considine manner, for all the
trouble I had taken on her account, sent her love to Barbara and to
Susan, whose sickness, she trusted, would be transitory, expressed the
hope that the care of her belongings would not be too great a strain
upon my household--and then, like a flash of lightning, in the very
middle of the humming restaurant filled with all the notabilities and
respectabilities of Havre, she flung her generous arms around my neck in
a great hug, and kissed me, and said: "Dear old Hilary, I do love you!"
and marched away magnificently through the staring tables to the inner
recesses of the hotel.

Puzzledom reigned in Havre that night. English people are credited in
France with any form of eccentricity, so long as it conforms with
traditions of _le flegme britannique_; but there was not much _flegme_
about Liosha's embrace, and so the good Havrais were mystified.

There was no following Liosha. She had made her exit. To have run after
her were an artistic crime; and in real life we are more instinctively
artistic and dramatic than the unthinking might suppose. Besides, there
was the bill to pay. We sat down again.

"That little chap never seems to have any luck," said Jaffery. "He's one
of the finest seamen afloat, with a nerve of steel and a damnable way of
getting himself obeyed. He ought to be in command of a great liner
instead of a rotten old tramp of fifteen hundred tons."

I beamed. "I'm glad you call it a rotten old tramp. I described it in
those terms to Liosha."

"Oh!" said Jaffery. "Precious lot you know about it." He yawned
cavernously. "I'll be turning in soon, myself."

It was not yet ten o'clock. "And what shall I do?" I asked.

"Better turn in, too, if you want to see us off."

"My dear Jaff," said I, "you have always bewildered me, and when I
contemplate this new caprice I am beyond the phenomenon of bewilderment.
But in one respect my mind retains its serene equipoise. Nothing short
of an Act of God shall drag me from my bed at half-past four in the
morning."

"I wanted to give you a few last instructions."

"Give them to me now," said I.

He handed me the key of his chambers. "If you wouldn't mind tidying up,
some day--I left my papers in a deuce of a mess."

"All right," said I.

"And I had better give you a power of att