If he was a
medico, like you, doctor, there'd be less wonder--but as it is!--" and
Mr. Motley resigned himself again to the influence of the sunshine. A
moment's meditation on the doctor's part, to judge by his face, was
delectable.

"There isn't any sickness down there?" he said then.

"Always is in the steerage--isn't there?" said Mr. Motley,--"I don't
know!--the surgeon can tell you."

"There's no occasion,--" said the doctor with a little haughtiness. "He
knows who I am."

And Dr. Harrison too resigned himself, apparently, to the sunny
influences of the time and was silent.

But as the sun went down lower and lower, Mr. Motley roused himself up
and went off to try the effect upon his spirits of a little cheerful
society,--then Mr. Linden came and took the vacant chair.

"How beautiful it is!" he said, in a tone that was half greeting, half
meditation. The start with which Dr. Harrison heard him was skilfully
transformed into a natural change of position.

"Beautiful?--yes," said he. "Has the beauty driven Motley away?"

"He is gone.--Your waves are very dazzling to-night, doctor."

"They are helping us on," said the doctor looking at them. "We shall be
in after two days more--if this holds."

Helping us on--perhaps the thought was not unqualified in Mr. Linden's
mind, for he considered that--or something else--in grave silence for a
minute or two.

"Dr. Harrison," he said suddenly, "you asked me about my course--I wish
you would tell me yours. Towards what--for what. You bade me call
myself a friend--may I use a friend's privilege?" He spoke with a
grave, frank earnestness.

The doctor's face shewed but a small part of the astonishment which
this speech raised. It shewed a little.

"I can be but flattered!--" he said with something of the old graceful
medium between play and earnest. "You ask me what I am hardly wise
enough to answer you. I am going to Paris, and you to Germany. After
that, I really know about as much of one 'course' as of the other."

"My question referred, not to the little daily revolutions, but to the
great life orbit. Harrison, what is yours to be?"

Evidently it was an uneasy question. Yet the power of influence--or of
associations--was such that Dr. Harrison did not fling it away. "I
remember," he said, not without some bitterness of accent--"you once
did me the honour to profess to care."

"I do care, very much." And one of the old looks, that Dr. Harrison
well remembere