e he did not
stay through the four years," he said gravely.

Miss Holcombe was looking down the table, down and across to where her
father was sitting, at Mr. Brewster's right. When she spoke again the
personal note was gone; and after that the talk, what there was of it,
was of the sort that is meant to bridge discomforting gaps.

In the dispersal after the meal, Lidgerwood attached himself to Miss
Doty; this in sheer self-defense. The desert passage was still in its
earlier stages, and Miss Carolyn's volubility promised to be the less of
two evils, the greater being the possibility that Eleanor Brewster might
seek to re-open a certain spring of bitterness at which he had been
constrained to drink deeply and miserably in the past.

The self-defensive expedient served its purpose admirably. For the
better part of the desert run, the president slept in his state-room,
Mrs. Brewster and the judge dozed in their respective easy-chairs, and
Jefferis and Miriam Holcombe, after roaming for an uneasy half-hour from
the rear platform to the cook's galley forward, went up ahead, at one of
the stops, to ride--by the superintendent's permission--in the engine
cab with Williams. Miss Brewster and Van Lew were absorbed in a book of
plays, and their corner of the large, open compartment was the one
farthest removed from the double divan which Lidgerwood had chosen for
Miss Carolyn and himself.

Later, Van Lew rolled a cigarette and went to the smoking-compartment,
which was in the forward end of the car; and when next Lidgerwood broke
Miss Doty's eye-hold upon him, Miss Brewster had also disappeared--into
her state-room, as he supposed. Taking this as a sign of his release, he
gently broke the thread of Miss Carolyn's inquisitiveness, and went out
to the rear platform for a breath of fresh air and surcease from the
fashery of a neatly balanced tongue.

When it was quite too late to retreat, he found the deep-recessed
observation platform of the _Nadia_ occupied. Miss Brewster was not in
her state-room, as he had mistakenly persuaded himself. She was sitting
in one of the two platform camp-chairs, and she was alone.

"I thought you would come, if I only gave you time enough," she said,
quite coolly. "Did you find Carolyn very persuasive?"

He ignored the query about Miss Doty, replying only to the first part of
her speech.

"I thought you had gone to your state-room. I hadn't the slightest idea
that you were out here."

"Ot