o be my wife."

"Oh!" cried the girl breathlessly, turning her head away.

"Do you think I would have any chance?" asked Ormond.

"Of making a living?" inquired the girl, after a moment's silence.

"No. I am sure of making a living, for I have always done so.
Therefore, answer my question: Mary, do you think I would have any
chance?" And he placed his hand softly over hers, which lay on the
ship's rail.

The girl did not answer, but she did not withdraw her hand; she gazed
down at the bright green water with its tinge of foam.

"I suppose you know," she said at length, "that you have every chance,
and that you are merely pretending ignorance to make it easier for me,
because I have simply flung myself at your head ever since we began
the voyage."

"I am not pretending, Mary," he said. "What I feared was that your
interest was only that of a nurse in a somewhat backward patient. I
was afraid that I had your sympathy, but not your love. Perhaps that
was the case at first."

"Perhaps that was the case--at first--but it is far from being the
truth now--Sidney."

The young man made a motion to approach nearer to her, but the girl
drew away, whispering:

"There are other people besides ourselves on deck, remember."

"I don't believe it," said Ormond, gazing fondly at her. "I can see no
one but you. I believe we are floating alone on the ocean together and
that there is no one else in the wide world but our two selves. I
thought I went to Africa for fame, but I see I really went to find
you. What I sought seems poor compared to what I have found."

"Perhaps," said the girl, looking shyly at him, "fame is waiting as
anxiously for you to woo her as--as another person waited. Fame is a
shameless huzzy, you know."

The young man shook his head.

"No. Fame has jilted me once. I won't give her another chance."

So those who were twain sailed gently into Southampton docks resolved
to be one when the gods were willing.

Miss Mary Radford's people were there to meet her, and Ormond went up
to London alone, beginning his short railway journey with a return of
the melancholy that had oppressed him during the first part of his
long voyage. He felt once more alone in the world, now that the bright
presence of his sweetheart was missing, and he was saddened by the
thought that the telegram he had hoped to send to Jimmy Spence,
exultingly announcing his arrival, would never be sent. In a newspaper
he bought at the statio