ed,
"if we all had just what we deserved!... Now give me your arm. I want to
walk a little. While we walk, if you like, I will try to tell you what I
can about New York. It may interest you."

They walked up and down the deck, and by degrees their conversation
drifted into a discussion of such recent plays as were familiar to both
of them. At the far end of the ship she clung to him once or twice as the
wind came booming over the freshening waves. She weighed and measured his
criticisms of the plays they spoke of, and in the main approved of them.
When at last she stopped outside the companionway and bade him good
night, the deck was almost deserted. They were near one of the electric
lights, and he saw her face more distinctly than he had seen it at all,
realised more adequately its wonderful charm. The large, firm mouth,
womanly and tender though it was, was almost the mouth of a protector.
She smiled at him as one might smile at a boy.

"You are to sleep well," she said firmly. "Those are my orders. Good
night!"

She gave him her hand--a woman's soft and delicate fingers, yet clasping
his with an almost virile strength and friendliness. She left him with
just that feeling about her--that she was expansive, in her heart, her
sympathies, even her brain and peculiar gifts of apprehension. She left
him, too, with a curious sense of restfulness, as though suddenly he
had become metamorphosed into the woman and had found a sorely-needed
guardian. He abandoned without a second thought his intention of going to
the smoking-room and sitting up late. The thought of his empty stateroom,
a horror to him a few hours ago, seemed suddenly almost alluring, and he
made his way there cheerfully. He felt the sleep already upon his eyes.

CHAPTER VI

All the physical exhilaration of his unlived youth seemed to be dancing
in Philip Romilly's veins when he awoke the next morning to find an open
porthole, the blue sea tossing away to infinity, and his steward's
cheerful face at his bedside.

"Bathroom steward says if you are ready, sir, he can arrange for your
bath now," the man announced.

Philip sprang out of bed and reached for his Bond Street dressing-gown.

"I'll bring you a cup of tea when you get back, sir," the steward
continued. "The bathrooms are exactly opposite."

The sting of the salt water seemed to complete his new-found
light-heartedness. Philip dressed and shaved, whistling softly all the
time to himself. He