inatingly of
superb health. The tan on her face was not made noticeable in contrast
by her shoulders and arms, old ivory in tint and as smooth and glossy
as ancient Carrara.

"You lovely creature!" murmured Martha, touching an arm with her lips.

"Am I really lovely?"

"You would be adorable if you had a heart."

"Perhaps I have one. Who knows?"

"You are foolish to dress like this." Martha finished the hooking of
Elsa's waist.

"And why?"

"In the first place there's nobody worth the trouble; and nobody but a
duchess or a . . ." Martha paused embarrassedly.

"Or a what? An improper person?" Elsa laughed. "My dear Martha, your
comparisons are faulty. I know but two duchesses in this wide world
who are not dowdies, and one of them is an American. An improper
person is generally the most proper, outside her peculiar environments.
Can't you suggest something else?"

Martha searched but found no suitable reply. One thing she felt
keenly, a feverish impatience for the boat to reach Singapore where
Elsa's folly must surely end. She believed that she saw more clearly
into the future than Elsa. Some one would talk, and in that strange
inscrutable fashion scandal has of reaching the ends of the earth, the
story would eventually arrive home; and there, for all the professions
of friendship, it would find admittance. No door is latched when
scandal knocks. Over here they were very far from home, and it was
natural that Elsa should view her conduct leniently. Martha readily
appreciated that it was all harmless, to be expressed by a single word,
whim. But Martha herself never acted upon impulse; she first
questioned what the world would say. So run the sheep.

For years Martha had discharged her duties, if mechanically yet with a
sense of pleasure and serenity. At this moment she was as one pushed
unexpectedly to the brink of a precipice, over which the slightest
misstep would topple her. The world was out of joint. Shockingly bad
wishes flitted through her head. Each wish aimed at the disposal,
imaginary of course, of Warrington: by falling overboard, by being
seized with one of the numerous plagues, by having a deadly fracas with
one of those stealthy Lascars.

"I wish we had gone to Italy," she remarked finally.

"It would not have served my purpose in the least. I should have been
dancing and playing bridge and going to operas. I should have had no
time for thinking."

"Thinking!" Martha