before you
go."

"Not at all," replied Maxine. "On the boat going over----"

"Over where?"

"Honolulu, on my way to Japan, I'll meet a tall bearded stranger,
sunburned, with the flame of the Orient in his eyes, and on his thin,
cruel, sensual mouth----"

Arnold Hatch took off his glasses. Maxine stiffened. "Don't you d----"
But she was too late.

"There," said Arnold, "he'll have to have some beard, and some flame,
and some thin, cruel, sensual mouth to make you forget that one."

Maxine started, alone, against her mother's remonstrances. After she'd
picked out her boat she changed to another because she learned, at the
last minute, that the first boat was an oil-burner. Being an
inexperienced traveller she took a good many trunks and was pretty
unpopular with the steward before he could make her understand that one
trunk to the stateroom was the rule. On the first two days out on the
way to the Hawaiian Islands she spent all her time (which was
twenty-four hours a day in her bed) hoping that Balboa was undergoing
fitting torment in punishment for his little joke about discovering the
so-called Pacific Ocean. But the swell subsided, and the wind went down,
and Maxine appeared on deck and in another twelve hours had met everyone
from the purser to the honeymoon couple, in the surprising way one does
on these voyages. She looked for the tall bearded stranger with the
sunburn of the Orient and the thin, cruel, sensual lips. But he didn't
seem to be about. Strangely enough, everyone she talked to seemed to be
from Nebraska, or Kansas, or Iowa, or Missouri. Not only that, they all
were very glib with names and places that had always seemed mythical and
glamorous.

"Oh, yes, Mr. Tannenbaum and I went to India last year, and Persia and
around. Real interesting. My, but they're dirty, those towns. We used to
kick about Des Moines, now that they use so much soft coal, and all the
manufacturing and all. But my land, it's paradise compared to those
places. And the food! Only decent meals we had in Egypt was a place in
Cairo called Pardee's, run by a woman whose husband's left her or died,
or something. Real home-loving woman she was. Such cooking.... Why,
that's so! Your name's Pardee, too, isn't it! Well, I always say to Mr.
Tannenbaum, it's a small world, after all. No relation, of course?"

"Of course not." How suddenly safe Oklahoma seemed. And Arnold Hatch.

"Where you going from Honolulu, Miss Pardee?"

"Samark