"Rather say I am!" with laughter. "Why, a child could read Arthur
Cathewe's face when he looks at her. Isn't she simply beautiful?"

"Very. But there are types and types."

"Am I really pretty?" Sometimes she grew shy under her father's open
admiration. She was afraid it was his love rather than his judgment
that made her beautiful in his eyes.

"My child, there's more than one man who will agree with me when I say
that there is no one to compare with you. You are the living quotation
from Keats."

"I shall kiss you for that." And straightway she did.

"What do you think of Mr. Breitmann?" soberly.

"He is charming sometimes; but he has a little too much reserve.
Doubtless he sees his position too keenly. He should not."

"Do you like him?"

"Yes," frankly.

"So do I; and yet there are moments when I do not." The admiral filled
his pipe carefully.

"But your reason?" surprised.

"That's just the trouble. I haven't any tangible reason. The doubt
exists, and I can't explain it. The sea often looks smooth and mild,
and the sky is cloudless; yet an old sailor will suddenly grow
suspicious; he will see a storm, a heavy blow. And why, he couldn't
say for the life of him. Flanagan will tell you."

The girl grew studious and grave. Had there not been an echo of this
doubt in her own mind? Immediately she smiled.

"We are talking nonsense and wasting the sunshine."

"How about Fitzgerald?"

"Oh, he's the most sensible of them all. He proposed to me the first
night out."

"What?" The admiral dropped his pipe.

"Not so loud!" she warned. And then the clear music of her laughter
penetrated beyond the cabin; and Fitzgerald, wandering about without
purpose, heard it and paused.

"You minx!" growled the admiral; "to scare your old father like that!"

"Dearest, weren't you fishing to be scared?"

"Let's get out into the sunshine. I never could get the best of you.
But you really don't mean--"

"I really do not. He's too busy telling me the plot of this novel he
is going to write to make love to a girl who doesn't want more than one
man in the family, and that's her foolish old father."

And they went outside, arm in arm, laughing together like the good
comrades they were. M. Ferraud joined them.

"I wish," said he, "that I was a poet."

"What would you do?" she asked.

"I should write a sonnet to your eyebrows this morning, is it not?"

"Mercy, no! That kind of poetry has long b