When he is thrown into a close shipboard intimacy
with her, and discovers her to be at once an exacting tyrant and a
jolly chum, when the maid is possessed of a strange and exciting
history, and congenial tastes, when she is not unaware of her own
excellence, and, at times, not disinclined to coquet a trifle before a
young, virile male--then, the romantic young man's blood experiences a
permanent rise in temperature, and there are moments when his heart
lodges uncomfortably in his throat, and moments when it beats a devil's
own tattoo upon his ribs.

And when there are wonderful tropic nights, and bright eyes by his side
that outrival the stars overhead, and a glorious tenor voice softly
singing songs of love nearby--then, the heady wine of life works a
revolution in a romantic young man's being, and in the turmoil he is
accorded his first blinding glimpse of the lover's heaven of fulfilled
desire, and his first glimpse also of the lover's hell of doubting
despair. A man, a maid, a soft, starry night upon the water, a song of
love--of course it was inevitable!

Martin's previous experience with the tender passion was not extensive.
Circumstance, shyness and fastidiousness had caused him to ignore most
of the rather frequent opportunities to philander that his good looks
and lively imagination created, and upon the rare occasions when he had
paused, it was because of curiosity--a curiosity quickly sated.

Of course, he had been in love. At twelve years he had betrothed
himself to the girl who sat across the aisle, at fifteen, he exchanged
rings and vows with a lady of fourteen who lived in the next block, at
seventeen he conceived a violent affection for the merry Irish girl who
presided over his uncle's kitchen--but Norah scoffed, and remained true
to the policeman on the beat, and Martin, for a space, embraced the
more violent teachings of anarchy and dreamed with gloomy glee of
setting off a dynamite bomb under a certain uniformed prop of law and
order.

The uncle died, and Martin was henceforth too busy earning a living to
indulge in sentimental adventures. After a time, as he grew to manhood
and his existence became more assured, he became a reader of stories;
and unconsciously he commenced to measure the girls he met with the
entrancing heroines of his fiction. The girls suffered by comparison,
and Martin's interest in them remained Platonic.

By degrees he became possessor of that refuge of lonely bachel