y own. He was
now taking Miss Denison back to England, to make her home with other
relatives, before he himself returned to Africa (as he once told me) to
lay his bones beside those of his wife. I hardly know which of the pair
I see more plainly as I write--the young girl with her soft eyes and her
sunny hair, or the old gentleman with the erect though wasted figure,
the noble forehead, the steady eye, the parchment skin, the white
imperial, and the eternal cigarette between his shrivelled lips.

No need to say that I came more in contact with the young girl. She was
not less charming in my eyes because she provoked me greatly as I came
to know her intimately. She had many irritating faults. Like most young
persons of intellect and inexperience, she was hasty and intolerant in
nearly all her judgments, and rather given to being critical in a crude
way. She was very musical, playing the guitar and singing in a style
that made our shipboard concerts vastly superior to the average of their
order; but I have seen her shudder at the efforts of less gifted folks
who were also doing their best; and it was the same in other directions
where her superiority was less specific. The faults which are most
exasperating in another are, of course, one's own faults; and I confess
that I was very critical of Eva Denison's criticisms. Then she had
a little weakness for exaggeration, for unconscious egotism in
conversation, and I itched to tell her so. I felt so certain that the
girl had a fine character underneath, which would rise to noble heights
in stress or storm: all the more would I long now to take her in hand
and mould her in little things, and anon to take her in my arms just as
she was. The latter feeling was resolutely crushed. To be plain, I had
endured what is euphemistically called "disappointment" already; and,
not being a complete coxcomb, I had no intention of courting a second.

Yet, when I write of Eva Denison, I am like to let my pen outrun my
tale. I lay the pen down, and a hundred of her sayings ring in my
ears, with my own contradictious comments, that I was doomed so soon
to repent; a hundred visions of her start to my eyes; and there is the
trade-wind singing in the rigging, and loosening a tress of my darling's
hair, till it flies like a tiny golden streamer in the tropic sun.
There, it is out! I have called her what she was to be in my heart ever
after. Yet at the time I must argue with her--with her! When all m