imself from the betise of boring her by the fact that his
enthusiasm had in it so fresh a quality, and because he was so like
her Gonzales that she could always endure him. Besides, quick of
intelligence as she was, she was by nature more material than she
looked, and there was certainly something physically attractive in
him--some curious magnetism. She had a well of sensuousness which might
one day become sensuality; she had a richness of feeling and a contour
in harmony with it, which might expand into voluptuousness, if given
too much sun, or if untamed by the normal restraints of a happy married
life. There was an earthquake zone in her being which might shake down
the whole structure of her existence. She was unsafe, not because she
was deceiving Jean Jacques now as to her origin and as to her feelings
for him; she was unsafe because of the natural strain of the light of
love in her, joined to a passion for comfort and warmth and to a natural
self-indulgence. She was determined to make Jean Jacques offer himself
before they landed at Quebec.

But they did not land at Quebec.

CHAPTER II. "THE REST OF THE STORY TO-MORROW"

The journey wore on to the coast of Canada. Gaspe was not far off when,
still held back by the constitutional tendency of the Norman not to
close a bargain till compelled to do so, Jean Jacques sat with Carmen
far forward on the deck, where the groaning Antoine broke the waters
into sullen foam. There they silently watched the sunset, golden, purple
and splendid--and ominous, as the captain knew.

"Look, the end of life--like that!" said Jean Jacques oratorically with
a wave of the hand towards the prismatic radiance.

"All the way round, the whole circle--no, it would be too much," Carmen
replied sadly. "Better to go at noon--or soon after. Then the only
memory of life would be of the gallop. No crawling into the night for
me, if I can help it. Mother of Heaven, no! Let me go at the top of the
flight."

"It is all the same to me," responded Jean Jacques, "I want to know it
all--to gallop, to trot, to walk, to crawl. Me, I'm a philosopher. I
wait."

"But I thought you were a Catholic," she replied, with a kindly, lurking
smile, which might easily have hardened into scoffing.

"First and last," he answered firmly.

"A Catholic and a philosopher--together in one?" She shrugged a shoulder
to incite him to argument, for he was interesting when excited;
when spurting out little geyser