lovely to look upon should have been her protection. It afforded me no excuse to follow and spy upon her. With this thought, I hastily returned to the upper deck to bury myself in my book. If it did not serve to keep my mind from the young lady, at least I would prevent my eyes from causing her annoyance.     

       I was about to take the chair that the young man had left vacant when Kinney objected.     

       “He was very much interested in our conversation,” Kinney said, “and he may return.”      

       I had not noticed any eagerness on the part of the young man to talk to Kinney or to listen to him, but I did not sit down.     

       “I should not be surprised a bit,” said Kinney, “if that young man is no end of a swell. He is a Harvard man, and his manner was most polite. That,” explained Kinney, “is one way you can always tell a real swell. They’re not high and mighty with you. Their social position is so secure that they can do as they like. For instance, did you notice that he smoked a pipe?”      

       I said I had not noticed it.     

       For his holiday Kinney had purchased a box of cigars of a quality more expensive than those he can usually afford. He was smoking one of them at the moment, and, as it grew less, had been carefully moving the gold band with which it was encircled from the lighted end. But as he spoke he regarded it apparently with distaste, and then dropped it overboard.     

       “Keep my chair,” he said, rising. “I am going to my cabin to get my pipe.”        I sat down and fastened my eyes upon my book; but neither did I understand what I was reading nor see the printed page. Instead, before my eyes, confusing and blinding me, was the lovely, radiant face of the beautiful lady. In perplexity I looked up, and found her standing not two feet from me. Something pulled me out of my chair. Something made me move it toward her. I lifted my hat and backed away. But the eyes of the lovely lady halted me.     

       To my perplexity, her face expressed both surprise and pleasure. It was as though either she thought she knew me, or that I reminded her of some man she did know. Were the latter the case, he must have been a friend, for the way in which she looked at me was kind. And there was, besides, the expression 

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