icult, you know. If he shouldn't
turn out right . . ." with commendable hesitance.

"I'll take all the responsibility. It's a whim."

"Well, you American girls are the eighth wonder of the world." The
purser was distinctly annoyed. "And it may be an impertinence on my
part, but I never yet saw an American woman who would accept advice or
act upon it."

"Thanks. What would you advise?" with dangerous sweetness.

"Not to meet this man. It's irregular. I know nothing about him. If
you had a father or a brother on board. . . ."

"Or even a husband!" laughing.

"There you are!" resignedly. "You laugh. You women go everywhere, and
half the time unprotected."

"Never quite unprotected. We never venture beyond the call of
gentlemen."

"That is true," brightening. "You insist on meeting this chap?"

"I do not insist; only, I am bored, and he might interest me for an
hour." She added: "Besides, it may annoy the others."

The purser grinned reluctantly. "You and the colonel don't get on.
Well, I'll introduce this chap at dinner. If I don't. . . .

"I am fully capable of speaking to him without any introduction
whatever." She laughed again. "It will be very kind of you."

When he had gone she mused over this impulse so alien to her character.
An absolute stranger, a man with a past, perhaps a fugitive from
justice; and because he looked like Arthur Ellison, she was seeking his
acquaintance. Something, then, could break through her reserve and
aloofness? She had traveled from San Francisco to Colombo, unattended
save by an elderly maiden who had risen by gradual stages from nurse to
companion, but who could not be made to remember that she was no longer
a nurse. In all these four months Elsa had not made half a dozen
acquaintances, and of these she had not sought one. Yet, she was
asking to meet a stranger whose only recommendation was a singular
likeness to another man. The purser was right. It was very irregular.

"Parrot & Co.!" she murmured. She searched among the phantoms moving
to and fro upon the ledge; but the man with the cage was gone. It was
really uncanny.

She dropped her arms from the rail and went to her stateroom and
dressed for dinner. She did not give her toilet any particular care.
There was no thought of conquest, no thought of dazzling the man in
khaki. It was the indolence and carelessness of the East, where
clothes become only necessities and are no longer the essent