ouples were doing the
same. These little games of two and two go forward all the time on
voyages to the Cape (especially nearing the Equator), and are the joy of
the genial-hearted. Even those who have no little games of their own are
wont to look on sympathetically, or, better still, to turn away the
understanding eye. The long, lazy, somnolent days and the magic nights,
star-spangled above and lit with phosphorescent seas below, lend
themselves to the dangerous kind of flirtation that says little and looks
much, and if there is any place in the world where Cupid is rampant and
"Psyche may meet unblamed her Eros," it is on the deck of a liner in the
tropics.

But either Diana was one of those unfortunate girls who cannot glance
over the garden wall without being accused of stealing peaches, or else
she had too thoroughly got people's backs up during the first week at
sea, for everyone looked cold-eyed at her romance and called it
unromantic names. There were continual little undercurrents of gossip
going on about her beneath the otherwise pleasant surface of everyday
life. April did not talk gossip nor listen to it, but she was vaguely
aware of it. Except for this, she would have been the happiest girl in
the world, and, indeed, she did not allow it to bother her too much,
having made up her mind to cast care to the winds and enjoy herself while
the sun shone. Destruction might come after--at Cape Town, perhaps, but
if it did, _tant pis_!

Something of Diana's recklessness entered into her, only that it did not
take the form of outraging the convenances, but just of enjoying life to
the full with the permission and approval of the world. She loved the
summer seas, and each blue and golden hour seemed all too short for the
pleasure to be stuffed into it.

Everyone was delightful to her. Gone were the days when all women's
hands were against her and her hand against all men. When she had time
to think about it, she fully recognized that most of the admiration and
kindness tendered to her by the other passengers was entirely worthless,
and merely the result of snobbery.

But she had neither time nor inclination to go too deeply into the matter
with herself. Her heart very ardently desired to believe that some at
least of the people who made such a fuss over her liked her for herself
alone, regardless of the rank and wealth she was supposed to possess.
Sarle, for instance--Vereker Sarle, the shy man of wild