anticipation of the rocking
they were doomed to get in the ancient tub once she steamed out of the
harbour and into the face of the gale. In the "gang," as he called it,
there was visible but one person in what Max Doran had been accustomed
to think of as his own "rank." That person was a girl, and despite the
gloom which shut him into himself, he glanced at her now and then with
curiosity. It seemed unaccountable that such a girl should be travelling
apparently alone, and especially second-class.

The first thing that caught his attention was the colour of her hair as
she stood with her back to him, on deck. She was wrapped in a long, dark
blue coat, with well-cut lines which showed the youthfulness of her
tall, slim figure, as tall and slim as Billie Brookton's, but more
alertly erect, more boyish. On her head was a small, close-fitting toque
of the same dark blue as her coat; and between this cap and the
turned-up collar bunched out a thick roll of yellow hair. It was not as
yellow as Billie's, yet at first glance it reminded him of hers, with a
sick longing for lost beauty and romance. Seeing the delicate figure,
cloaked in the same blue which Billie affected for travelling, he
thought what it would be like to have the girl with the yellow hair
turn, to show Billie's face radiant with love for him, to hear her
flutey voice cry: "Max, I couldn't bear it without you! Forget what I
said in that horrid letter. I didn't mean a word of it. I've given up
everything to be your wife. Take me!"

Soon the girl did turn from the rain blowing into her face, and that
face was of an entirely different type from Billie's. Seeing it, after
that attack upon his imagination, was a sharp relief to Max. Still he
did not lose interest. The girl's hair was not so yellow where it grew
on her head and framed the rather thin oval of her face, as in the
thick-rolled mass behind, golden still with childhood's gold. Except for
her tall slenderness she was not in the least like Billie Brookton; and
she would have no great pretension to beauty had it not been for a pair
of long, gray, thick-lashed eyes which looked out softly and sweetly on
the world. Her nose was too small and her mouth too large, but the
delicate cutting of the nostrils and the bow of the coral-pink upper lip
had fascination and a sensitiveness that was somehow pathetic. She held
her head high, on a long and lovely throat, which gave her a look of
courage, but a forced courag