an unexpected
shoal. There might have been some danger of an upset if the oars were
in less skillful hands. As it was, they were back in deep water within
a few seconds.

Cynthia laughed without the least tremor.

"You were kicking my Italian acquaintance in imagination then; I hope
you see now that you might have been mistaken," she cried.

"Even in this instance I only touched mud."

"Well, well, let us forget the Signor Principe. Tell me about
yourself. How did you come to enlist? In my country, men of your stamp
do not join the army unless some national crisis arises. But, perhaps,
that applies to your case. The Boers nearly beat you, didn't they?"

He took advantage of the opening thus presented, and was able to
interest her in stories of the campaign without committing himself to
details. Nevertheless, a man who had served on the headquarters staff
during the protracted second phase of the South African war could
hardly fail to exhibit an intimate knowledge of that history which
is never written. Though Cynthia had met many leaders of thought and
action, she had never before encountered one who had taken part in a
struggle of such peculiar significance as the Boer revolt. She was not
an English girl, eager only to hear tales of derring-do in which her
fellow-countrymen figure heroically, but a citizen of that wider
world that refuses to look at events exclusively through British
spectacles; therein lay the germ of real peril to Medenham. He had not
only to narrate but to convince. He was called on to answer questions
of policy and method that few if any of the women in his own circle
would think of putting. Obviously, this appeal to his intellect
weakened the self-imposed guard on his lips. There is excellent
authority for the belief that Desdemona loved Othello for the dangers
he had passed, and did with greedy ear devour his discourse, yet it
may well be conceded that an explanatory piquancy would have been
added to the Moor's account

Of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field,

if the lady were not a maid of Venice but hailed from some kindred
city that refused to range all the virtues on the side of the Mistress
of the Adriatic.

More than once it chanced that Medenham had to exercise his wits very
quickly to trip his tongue when on the verge of some indiscretion
that would betray him. Perhaps he was unduly cautious. Perhaps his
listener's heart had m