I could not help seeing the difference between the two men as they stood together--Martin with his sea-blue eyes and his look of splendid health, and my husband with his sallow cheeks and his appearance of wasted strength--and somehow from some unsearchable depths of my soul the contrast humbled me.

When I introduced Alma she took Martin's hand and held it while she gazed searchingly into his eyes from under her eyebrows, as she always did when she was being presented to a man; but I saw that in this instance her glance fell with no more effect on its object than a lighted vesta on a running stream.

After the usual banal phrases my husband inquired if Martin was staying in the house, and then asked if he would dine with us some day.

"Certainly! Delighted! With all the pleasure in the world," said Martin.

"Then," said my husband with rather frigid politeness, "you will see more of your friend Mary."

"Yes," said Alma, in a way that meant much, "you will see more of your friend Mary."

"Don't you worry about that, ma'am. You _bet_ I will," said Martin, looking straight into Alma's eyes; and though she laughed as she passed into the breakfast-room with my husband, I could see that for the first time in her life a man's face had frightened her.

"Then you knew?" I said, when they were gone.

"Yes; a friend of mine who met you abroad came down to see us into port and he ..."

"Dr. O'Sullivan?"

"That's the man! Isn't he a boy? And, my gracious, the way he speaks of you! But now ... now you must go to breakfast yourself, and I must be off about my business."

"Don't go yet," I said.

"I'll stay all day if you want me to; but I promised to meet the Lieutenant on the ship in half an hour, and ..."

"Then you must go."

"Not yet. Sit down again. Five minutes will do no harm. And by the way, now that I look at you again, I'm not so sure that you ... Italy, Egypt, there's enough sun down there, but you're pale ... a little pale, aren't you?"

I tried to make light of my pallor but Martin looked uneasy, and after a moment he asked:

"How long are you staying in London?"

I told him I did not know, whereupon he said:

"Well, I'm to be here a month, making charts and tables and reports for the Royal Geographical Society, but if you want me for anything ... do you want me now?"

"No-o, no, not now," I answered.

"Well, if you _do_ want me for anything--anything at all, mind, just pass the word and the charts and the tables and the reports and the Royal Geographical Society may go to the ... Well, somewhere."

I laughed and rose and told him he ought to go, though at the bottom of my heart I was wishing him to stay, and thinking how little and lonely I was, while here was a big brave man who could protect me from every danger.

We walked together to the door, and there I took his hand and held it, feeling, like a child, that if I let him go he might be lost in the human ocean outside and I should see no more of him.

At last, struggling hard with a lump that was gathering in my throat, I said:

"Martin, I have been so happy to see you. I've never been so happy to see anybody in my life. You'll let me see you again, won't you?"

"Won't I? Bet your life I will," he said, and then, as if seeing that my lip was trembling and my eyes were beginning to fill, he broke into a cheerful little burst of our native tongue, so as to give me a "heise"

as we say in Ellan and to make me laugh at the last moment.

"Look here--keep to-morrow for me, will ye? If them ones" (my husband and Alma) "is afther axing ye to do anything else just tell them there's an ould shipmate ashore, and he's wanting ye to go 'asploring.' See?

So-long!"

It had been like a dream, a beautiful dream, and as soon as I came to myself in the hall, with the visitors calling at the bureau and the page-boys shouting in the corridors, I found that my telegraph-form, crumpled and crushed, was still in the palm of my left hand.

I tore it up and went in to breakfast.

FOURTH PART

I FALL IN LOVE

FIFTY-FIRST CHAPTER

During our first day in London my husband had many visitors, including Mr. Eastcliff and Mr. Vivian, who had much to tell and arrange about.

I dare say a great many events had happened during our six months'

absence from England; but the only thing I heard of was that Mr.

Eastcliff had married his dancing-girl, that she had retired from the stage, and that her public appearances were now confined to the box-seat of a four-in-hand coach, which he drove from London to Brighton.

This expensive toy he proposed to bring round to the hotel the following day, which chanced to be Derby Day, when a party was to be made up for the races.

In the preparations for the party, Alma, who, as usual, attracted universal admiration, was of course included, but I did not observe that any provision was made for me, though that circumstance did not distress me in the least, because I was waiting for Martin's message.

It came early next morning in the person of Martin himself, who, running into our sitting-room like a breath of wind from the sea, said his fellow officers were separating that day, each going to his own home, and their commander had invited me to lunch with them on their ship, which was lying off Tilbury.

It did not escape me that my husband looked relieved at this news, and that Alma's face brightened as she said in her most succulent tones:

"I should go if I were you, Mary. The breeze on the river will do you a world of good, dear."

I was nothing loath to take them at their word, so I let them go off in their four-in-hand coach, a big and bustling party, while with a fast-beating heart I made ready to spend the day with Martin, having, as I thought, so much and such serious things to say to him.

A steam launch from the ship was waiting for us at the Westminster Pier, and from the moment I stepped into it I felt like another woman.

It was a radiant day in May, when the climate of our much-maligned London is the brightest and best, and the biggest city in the world is also the most beautiful.

How I loved it that day! The sunlight, the moving river, the soft air of early summer, the passing panorama of buildings, old and new--what a joy it was to me I sat on a side seat, dipping my hand over the gunwale into the cool water, while Martin, with a rush of racy words, was pointing out and naming everything.

St. Paul's was soon past, with the sun glistening off the golden cross on its dome; then London Bridge; then the Tower, with its Traitors'

Gate; then the new Thames Bridge; and then we were in the region of the barges and wharfs and warehouses, with their colliers and coasting traders, and with the scum of coal and refuse floating on the surface of the stream.

After that came uglier things still, which we did not mind, and then the great docks with the hammering of rivets and the cranking noise of the lightermen's donkey engines, loading and unloading the big steamers and sailing ships; and then the broad reaches of the river where the great liners, looking so high as we steamed under them, lay at anchor to their rusty cable-chains, with their port-holes gleaming in the sun like rows of eyes, as Martin said, in the bodies of gigantic fish.

At last we came out in a fresh breadth of water, with marshes on either side and a far view of the sea, and there, heaving a little to the flowing tide, and with a sea-gull floating over her mizzen mast, lay Martin's ship.