travelled from her feet to her face. There
they rested. I drew a deep breath. I forgot everything else. Then for
the first time I saw--Berna.

I will not try to depict the girl. Pen descriptions are so futile. I
will only say that her face was very pale, and that she had large
pathetic grey eyes. For the rest, her cheeks were woefully pinched and
her lips drooped wistfully. 'Twas the face, I thought, of a virgin
martyr with a fear-haunted look hard to forget. All this I saw, but most
of all I saw those great, grey eyes gazing unseeingly over the crowd,
ever so sadly fixed on that far-away East of her dreams and memories.

"Poor little beggar!"

Then I cursed myself for a sentimental impressionist and I went below.
Stateroom forty-seven was mine. We three had been separated in the
shuffle, and I knew not who was to be my room-mate. Feeling very
downhearted, I stretched myself on the upper berth, and yielded to a
mood of penitential sadness. I heard the last gang-plank thrown off, the
great crowd cheer, the measured throb of the engines, yet still I
sounded the depths of reverie. There was a bustle outside and growing
darkness. Then, as I lay, there came voices to my door, guttural tones
blended with liquid ones; lastly a timid knock. Quickly I answered it.

"Is this room number forty-seven?" a soft voice asked.

Even ere she spoke I divined it was the Jewish girl of the grey eyes,
and now I saw her hair was like a fair cloud, and her face fragile as a
flower.

"Yes," I answered her.

She led forward the old man.

"This is my grandfather. The Steward told us this was his room."

"Oh, all right; he'd better take the lower berth."

"Thank you, indeed; he's an old man and not very strong."

Her voice was clear and sweet, and there was an infinite tenderness in
the tone.

"You must come in," I said. "I'll leave you with him for a while so
that you can make him comfortable."

"Thank you again," she responded gratefully.

So I withdrew, and when I returned she was gone; but the old man slept
peacefully.

It was late before I turned in. I went on deck for a time. We were
cleaving through blue-black night, and on our right I could dimly
discern the coast festooned by twinkling lights. Every one had gone
below, I thought, and the loneliness pleased me. I was very quiet,
thinking how good it all was, the balmy wind, the velvet vault of the
night frescoed with wistful stars, the freedom-song of the sea; how
restf