e steerage and deck
passengers gave satisfactorily robust testimony, the doctors came up to
the first-class passengers, who stood in line on the promenade deck;
and Peter saw the change that had come over Romola Borria.

Her face bore the pallor of the grave. Her large, lustrous eyes were
sunken, and lines seemed to have been engraved in a face that had
previously been as smooth and fair as a rose in bloom.

He felt panic-stricken as she recognized him with an almost
imperceptible nod, and he stared at her a trifle longer than was
necessary, with his lips slightly ajar, his nails biting into his
palms, and he sensed rather than saw, that her beauty had been
transformed into one of gray melancholy.

At that juncture, a tinkling voice shrilled up at him from the after
cargo-well, and Peter turned to see his small charge, the maid from
Macassar, smiling as she waited for him beside a small pile of silken
bundles of the rainbow's own colors. He had not forgotten the Eurasian
girl, but he desired to have a parting word with Romola Borria.

He called over the rail, and instructed her of the black pigtail to
wait for him in a sampan, and he yelled down to one of the dozens of
struggling and babbling coolies, whose sampans swarmed like a horde of
cockroaches at the ladder's lower extremity.

Romola Borria, alone, was awaiting him, adjusting her gloves, at the
doorway of the wireless cabin when he made his way back to that quarter
of the ship. She greeted him with a slow, grave smile; and by that
smile Peter was given to know how she had suffered.

Her face again became a mask, a mask of death, indeed, as her lids
fluttered down and then raised; and her eyes were tired.

He extended his hand, trying to inject some of his accustomed
cheerfulness into the gesture and into the smile which somehow would
not form naturally on his lips.

"This--is _adieu_--or _au revoir_?" he said solemnly.

"I hope--_au revoir_," she replied dully. "So, after all, you refuse
to take my counsel, my advice, seriously?"

Peter shrugged. "I'm rather afraid I can't," he said. "You see, I'm
young. And you can say to yourself, or out loud without fear of
hurting my feelings, that I am--foolish. I guess it is one of the
hardships of being young--this having to be foolish. Wasn't it to-day
that I was to become immortal, with a knife through my floating ribs,
or a bullet in my heart?

"As I grow older I will become more serious, with bala