LITMIR.BIZ

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and obscured it. But there was no reason on earth why he shouldn't see the face now, after waiting for three years. So he sprang up the ladder, thrilling in every pulse. There she was, leaning against the port rail, staring westward at the pearly smudge hanging over the receding city. William had never heard of Medusa, nor the shield of Perseus. He was, nevertheless, turned into stone for two consecutive minutes. There is nothing gentle or gradual about disillusion; it is a blow, swift and hurtful. William stood up under it passably well, however.

      Yonder was his school-teacher, without doubt; but she was also the young woman he had sat beside at the movie and whom he had mentally tangled up with runaway wives and all that. Finding his dream slipping from him, he made frantic efforts to catch hold and retain some of it. He simply could not let it go all at once. For ​three years he had endued yonder girl with the attributes which would belong, did such beings exist, to a demi-angel; and thus it was not humanly possible to let so fine a thing go to smash without making a fight for it.

      So he began to mobilize excuses. If she was a runaway wife, then the husband was a brute; if there was a Handsome-Is in the woodpile, then he had been too clever for her; and so on and so forth. He reached around blindly for other straws. She might be the daughter of a rich man, running away to avoid marrying the father's favored suitor. This idea pleased him mightily; it restored his belief in his ability to judge humans, gave him a foothold on earth again.

      Without his appreciating the fact, William had fallen in love with a shadow; and the unexpected appearance of the substance had thrown him off his balance.

      He was perhaps more than normally romantic; probably by this time you have guessed it. Yet, on the other side of the scales, there was good ballast in every-day common sense. But there was in him a something latent, stronger by far than romance or common sense; we call it superstition. Trust the Irishman to have this kink in his cosmos. In William it had been a negligible quantity for a long time, but it cracked its shell at this moment and fluttered forth. This wasn't any ordinary accident, he reasoned; something was meant by it. For three long years he had dreamed about this girl, and there she was, half a ​dozen strides away. So William's superstition cried out that the Lord had put her there not without some definite purpose concerning one William Grogan. How the Lord intended him to act he could not surmise, but he was determined to hang around on the job until the call came.

      For the first time in his life he recognized a real barrier. Here was a mixed-up family, bound together by a curious set of ties for six months. In a week or so, he cynically argued, everybody would know everybody else, family histories and so forth. And yet he hadn't the nerve to go over and speak to the girl. Why? Was it something in the fine profile, something in its expression that spoke of secret sorrow? He could not analyze what it was, but he knew, then and there, that he would never be able to speak to her with the free-dom he had previously used toward typewriter-girls, shop-girls, girls in the lunch-rooms, and the girl in the manicure-shop.

      He turned on his heels, fuming at both his lack of courage and this invisible barrier. He hated red hair and freckles. He looked at his hands. Well, they weren't so bad, even if they were as large as hams. The size of his feet had always troubled him; but the Lord knew they had to be big to carry around his weight. The inventory was highly unsatisfactory.

      For more than an hour he wandered about the decks. He was like a friendly outcast dog, striving to catch some one's eye and invariably failing. He was all alone. Most of the tourists ​were gathered in groups, chattering and gabbling over red-covered volumes which later he found to be the works of an eminent author by the name of Baedeker. Once upon a time, urged by Mrs. Burns, wife of his partner, William had been inveigled into a revival meeting. These tourists looked like a revival meeting turned loose.

      He sat down in a steamer chair, and he had no more than stretched out his legs comfortably when he was politely requested to vacate.

      "My chair, if you please."

      "Oh!" William got up and tried another, with the same result. "Say, where do you get these bedsteads?" he asked, with strained affability.

      "The deck steward will rent you one, sir," he was crisply informed.

      Once more William began his wanderings. He was little brother to Ishmael. Suddenly he laughed. They were all trying to bluff one another that they were old travelers or the most important people from their home towns. All pure bunk. Wait until the old blue lady began to heave; a lot of home-made halos would go back into the steamer trunks.

      After innocently insulting the first and second officers, the chief steward, and the purser, William finally located the deck steward and demanded a chair. It was given to him abaft the deck-houses amid a forest of ventilators and at the side of a huge coil of tarry-smelling rope.

      "Say, haven't you got anything down nearer ​the orchestra? I might as well be in the middle of Iowa."

      "Sorry, sir; but all the other places were spoken for weeks ago."

      William sat down and counted the ventilators, booms, guy-ropes, and ladders. He was learning. He had until this black hour believed that the chairs went along with the ticket. All right; if the cinders didn't bury him before they reached Naples, he'd find another spot. Beyond the coil of rope was another chair upon which lay a rug, a pillow, and some novels. Some one was going to share the desert with him. He stretched out his legs, assured that this time he would not be molested. Well, here he was, William Grogan, sailing toward his great dream—elephants and camels and cocoanuts by hand. Would there be any great adventures, the kind he had read about? Would they be shipwrecked and cast upon a desert island, with a tool-chest, a box of cigars, and a compass? Not in a million years. He would see the sights, spend a little money, and go home. There wouldn't be any boob to rescue from cruel gamblers; not on a trip like this. Besides, that was one of his rules, never to interfere with a guy who wanted to part with his money. And there wouldn't be any rescuing his school-teacher, either; no such luck.

      For a while he watched the stern—what he could see of it—go up suddenly, hang for a space in midair, then drop like a plummet. By and by he dozed. He had gone blue-fishing several times ​during rough weather, and his diaphragm had suffered no undue activities therefrom. In fact, he was one of those fortunate individuals who are born good sailors.

      He was awakened by the westering sun getting between some of the ventilators and striking full into his eyes. He sat up and blinked, looked at his watch—it was five—and glanced at the other chair. It was occupied. Moreover, it was occupied by no less a person than his school-teacher. He was now doubly sure that the mysterious hand of fate was in all this. What more convincing sign did he need?

      A moment later the sun awoke her also.

      "Pretty rocky seats," ventured William. "Wouldn't you like me to hunt up a better place?"

      "No, thanks; this was my choice." She picked up a book and began to turn the pages suggestively.

      But he was altogether too lonely to accept the subtle snub. "This is all new stuff to me. Never was a hundred miles out of New York before. But I'm a regular simp; no blankets, no books, no nothing. I wasn't hep to the fact that you had to have these things. I thought all you had to do was to turn the crank and start her. I don't even know how to get into the dining-room. One thing, though: they've bunked me with a couple of ancient mariners, and some morning I'll be accused of hiding the cork leg."

      She smiled absently, and riffled the pages of the book. She could not very well tell him outright that she did not care to talk.

      ​"Say, I'm not bothering you, am I?" he asked, with genuine apprehension.

      "Indeed, no."

      She closed the book resignedly and looked straight into William's face. Naturally the point of focus was his eye. And she liked the pair of them instantly. The whites were as blue-white as skimmed milk; and she could not recollect seeing anything bluer than the iris. There was something at once rugged and comical in his features—the pug-nose, the freckles, the shock of red hair, and the outstanding ears. Immediately after this inventory she realized that the ensemble was vaguely familiar.

      "Have I ever met

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