not altogether out of consideration for you. You see, I am quite frank."
"You are; most refreshingly frank. One might have hoped that time, and – and – "
–"And absence and new fields and faces, and all that, would make me forget," I finished for her. "Unhappily, they haven't. But that is neither here nor there. Though I have kept pretty well out of the civilized world for the past three years, there has been a word now and then from home. Tell me plainly, Connie – how much does Jerry Dupuyster know?"
"He knows that three years ago we were engaged to be married, you and I." The cool voice trembled a little, but it was still well under control.
"That is better," I commented with a sigh of relief; and it was better because, if Jerry hadn't known, there would have been chances for hideous complications on the proposed cruise of the Andromeda, or at least, in some inchoate way, I felt there would. "Does Jerry know why it was broken off?" I went on.
"He thinks he does."
"Which is to say that he accepts your Aunt Mehitable's version of it; the one she published broadcast among our friends – that, without any cause assigned, we simply agreed to disagree?"
"I suppose so."
Silence for a square or so, broken only by the drumming of the taxi's motor. Then I took the bull by the horns.
"Shall I tell Bonteck that, for reasons which I don't care to explain, I shall have to drop out of this badly mixed ship's company of his?"
The cool voice had fully regained its even tones when she said: "Why should you?"
"There is no 'why' unless you care to interpose one of your own making. But I should think, with Jerry Dupuyster along – "
"The Andromeda is a reasonably roomy little ship," was the calm retort. "And, besides, there are enough of us to afford protection – the protection of a crowd. If you have promised Bonteck, you can hardly break with him at the last moment, can you?"
"You don't care, then?"
"Why should I care? What is done is done, and can't be helped. Aunt Mehitable thinks I ought to marry; I suppose she thinks I owe it to her to marry and set up an establishment of my own. Perhaps I do owe it to her. I've been a charge upon her generosity all my life."
"So you are going to marry Jerry Dupuyster, a lisping club-lizard who apes the English so hard that he forgets that he has a string of American ancestors as long as your arm?" I flamed out.
"Well, if I am, what is it to you, Dick Preble? Or to any one else besides Jerry and me? Also, I might ask what right I have given you to put me upon the rack?"
"None; none whatever," I admitted gloomily. "Still, I have a right, of a sort – the right of the first man. You seem conveniently and successfully to have forgotten. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to forget, though I have tried all of the customary antidotes."
"Other women?" she asked, with the faintest possible touch of malice.
I was resentful enough to meet her baldly upon her own ground.
"There was a young woman in Venezuela; a pure Castilian, with the blood of kings in her veins. I could have married her."
"Why didn't you?" she asked sweetly.
"I have wished many times that I had. I wonder if you can understand if I say that I was afraid?"
"Mr. Kipling says that we can't understand – that we can never understand. But I think I know what you mean. You may have been Adam – the first man, again – for her; but she wasn't, and never could be, Eve – the first woman – for you. Was that it?"
The taxi was finally approaching the quarter of the city in which our wharf lay. There were other things to be said, and they had to be said hurriedly.
"Let us get things straightened out – before the crowd messes in," I said. "Three years ago we were engaged to be married. One day I was obliged to tell your Aunt Mehitable that the comfortable fortune my father had left me had been swallowed up in an exhausted Colorado gold mine, and that I'd have to go to work for a living. She then told me – with what seemed to me to be unnecessary spitefulness – that her will was made in favor of some charitable institution, and since you would thus be left penniless, it was up to me to set you free and give you a chance to marry somebody who could provide for you. Am I stating it clearly?"
"Clearly enough."
"Then she went on to say that the news of my misfortune had preceded me; that you had already been told all there was to tell; and that it would be a kindness to you if I should agree not to see you again."
"And you did me the kindness," she put in calmly. "I ought to be thankful for that. Perhaps I am thankful."
"I was furious," I confessed. "If you will permit me to say it this long after the fact, your aunt carries a vicious tongue in her head, and she didn't spare me. Also, I'll admit that my own temper isn't exactly patient or forgiving. It was the next morning that I had the chance to go to South America thrust at me, and the ship was sailing at noon. I left a letter for you and disappeared over the horizon."
"Yes," she replied in the same even tone; "I got the letter."
"That brings us down to date," I went on, as the taxi drew up at the wharf. "The next thing is the modus vivendi– the way we must live for the next few weeks. You say that Jerry knows that we were once engaged. If he is half a man, there will be plenty of chances for misunderstanding and trouble. We must agree to be decently quarrelsome."
"You have begun it beautifully," she said, with a hard little laugh. "Admitting your premises, what will Jerry think of this taxi drive – without a chaperon?"
"Jerry will never know that you came over with me – unless you tell him."
"Aunt Mehitable can tell him," she retorted, again with the touch of malice in her voice.
"But, for the sake of Major Terwilliger's money, she won't tell him," I ventured drily; and a moment later I was handing her up the Andromeda's accommodation ladder with a sharper misery in my heart than I had suffered since the night three years in the past when her dragoness aunt had goaded me into effacing myself.
There was a pleasant bustle of impending departure already going on aboard the yacht when we reached the deck. Most of the women – all of them, in fact, save the youngest of the Van Tromp trio and Annette Grey – had gone to their several staterooms, and the men were scattered – "dotted" was Conetta's word – here and there, apparently trying to find themselves, like so many cats in a strange garret.
"You will go below?" I said to Conetta when I had shown her the way aft.
"Yes; and by myself, if you please." Then, with a quick turn of the proud little head, and a look in the slate-blue eyes that was far beyond any man's fathoming: "Good-night, Dick, and good-by. Perhaps our quarrel would better begin right here and now." And with that she was gone.
It was possibly five minutes later that I met Grey, the newly married, roving in search of his mate.
"Annette?" he queried. "Have you seen her anywhere, Preble?"
"She is with Edie Van Tromp on the bridge," I told him. Then I linked an arm in his and drew him to the shoreward rail, saying: "Don't rush off. Throw that vile cigar away and light a fresh one, and
