capacitated, and could not sail. We were worried, all of us, to think
that you should miss his help. I was racking my brains to think what I
could do, when the inspiration came to meet you myself. It was an easy
matter to get off for a few weeks, as there was leave owing to me, and I
had started almost before I had time to think. Then came misgivings! I
did not know how you would take it, if it would seem to you like going
back on my promise. I had promised to keep on neutral ground for three
months, and a _tete-a-tete_ on shipboard seemed hardly playing the
game.--I started on the heat of an impulse, afire to see you at the
first possible moment; I landed at Port Said in a blue funk, the joy at
the thought of meeting swallowed in dread of what you might say. I
would have given a pile at that moment to have been safely back in
India. Then--you know how! we met on shore. I knew you at the first
glance, and, Katrine! you knew _me_. No matter who I was, or by what
name I called myself, you belonged to me, _and you knew it_!

"At that moment, for the first time, it flashed into my head to take
Bedford's place in Bedford's name. I had seen the list of passengers,
and I knew no one on board. Ours is an out-of-the-way station, and I
have seldom been home these last years. It seemed to me that if I kept
close and avoided the smoke-room, I might very well get through the rest
of the voyage without an explanation as to name. And I remembered what
you had said--all the little feminine arguments you had used rose up and
argued with me as they had never done before. You said that to meet a
man with whom you were expected, almost pledged, to fall in love, was a
big handicap to success; that if we could have a chance of meeting in
the ordinary way, as strangers pledged to no special interest, we could
test the strength of the mutual attraction far more surely. And another
time you said (I think this influenced me more than anything else!) you
said that one glance at my face, five minutes in my society, would tell
you more than a hundred letters! Do you remember saying that? The
inference was that the shape of my nose or ears was to count more than
character."

His strong hands pulled her round, so that her eyes met his.

"Katrine! do you like my ears? Are you satisfied with them now that you
see them in flesh?"

"I take no interest in your ears. What are your ears to me? I was
thinking of Jim Blair's ears, and