," she said.

"All in the past tense now," said he.

"I suppose so," she answered; "yet I sometimes find it hard to believe
that they are all as poisoned against England and as ignorant and
callous as people think. I can't picture some of my friends like that!"

She seemed to have got over her first touch of resentment. There was
certainly an air of good-breeding and even of distinction about the
man, and after all, his extreme assurance sat very naturally on him.
It had an unpremeditated matter-of-course quality that made it
difficult to remain offended.

"It is hard to picture a good many things," he said thoughtfully.
"Were you long in Germany?"

She told him two years, and then questioned him in return; but he
seemed to have a gift for conveying exceedingly little information with
an air of remarkable finality--as though he had given a complete report
and there was an end of it. On the other hand, he had an equal gift
for putting questions in a way that made it impossible not to answer
without churlishness. For his manner never lacked courtesy, and he
showed a flattering interest in each word of her replies. She felt
that she had never met a man who had put her more on her mettle and
made her instinctively wish more to show herself to advantage.

Yet she seemed fully capable of holding her own, for after half an
hour's conversation it would have been remarkably difficult to essay a
biographical sketch of Miss Eileen Holland. She had spent a number of
years abroad, and confessed to being a fair linguist; she was going to
the Islands "to stay with some people"; and she had previously done "a
little" war work--so little, apparently, that she had been advised to
seek a change of air, as her companion observed with a smile.

"Anyhow, I have not done enough," she said with a sudden intensity of
suppressed feeling in her voice.

The keen-faced clergyman glanced at her quickly, but said nothing. A
minute or two later he announced that he had some correspondence to
look over, and thereupon he left her with the same air of decision
instantly acted on with which he had first addressed her. He passed
through the door of the deck-house, and she got a glimpse of his head
going down the companion. Her face remained quite composed, but in her
eyes there seemed to be the trace of a suggestion that she was unused
to see gentlemen quit her side quite so promptly.

A few minutes later she went down herself to the lad