that clipped bits off the end of an iron bar, inch by inch, smoothly and deliberately. Mr. Van Torp's lips made her think of that; they seemed to cut the hard words one by one, in lengths.
'Poor girl!' she sighed, and looked away.
The man's face did not change, and if his next words echoed the sympathy she expressed his tone did not.
'I was a good deal cut up myself,' he observed coolly. 'Here's your book, Madame Cordova.'
'No,' Margaret answered with a little burst of indignation, 'I don't want it. I won't take it from you!'
'What's the matter now?' asked Mr. Van Torp without the least change of manner. 'It's your friend Mr. Lushington's latest, you know, and it won't be out for ten days. I thought you would like to see it, so I got an advance copy before it was published.'
He held the volume out to her, but she would not even look at it, nor answer him.
'How you hate me! Don't you, Madame Cordova?'
Margaret still said nothing. She was considering how she could best get rid of him. If she simply brushed past him and went back to her chair on the lee side, he would follow her and go on talking to her as if nothing had happened; and she knew that in that case she would lose control of herself before Griggs and Miss More.
'Oh, well,' he went on, 'if you don't want the book, I don't. I can't read novels myself, and I daresay it's trash anyhow.'
Thereupon, with a quick movement of his arm and hand, he sent Mr. Lushington's latest novel flying over the lee rail, fully thirty feet away, and it dropped out of sight into the grey waves. He had been a good baseball pitcher in his youth.
Margaret bit her lip and her eyes flashed.
'You are quite the most disgustingly brutal person I ever met,' she said, no longer able to keep down her anger.
'No,' he answered calmly. 'I'm not brutal; I'm only logical. I took a great deal of trouble to get that book for you because I thought it would give you pleasure, and it wasn't a particularly legal transaction by which I got it either. Since you didn't want it, I wasn't going to let anybody else have the satisfaction of reading it before it was published, so I just threw it away because it is safer in the sea than knocking about in my cabin. If you hadn't seen me throw it overboard you would never have believed that I had. You're not much given to believing me, anyway. I've noticed that. Are you, now?'
'Oh, it was not the book!'
Margaret turned from him and made a step forward so that she faced the sharp wind. It cut her face and she felt that the little pain was a relief. He came and stood beside her with his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat.
'If you think I'm a brute on account of what I told you about Miss Bamberger,' he said, 'that's not quite fair. I broke off our engagement because I found out that we were going to make each other miserable and we should have had to divorce in six months; and if half the people who are just going to get married would do the same thing there would be a lot more happy women in the world, not to say men! That's all, and she knew it, poor girl, and was just as glad as I was when the thing was done. Now what is there so brutal in that, Madame Cordova?'
Margaret turned on him almost fiercely.
'Why do you tell me all this?' she asked. 'For heaven's sake let poor
Miss Bamberger rest in her grave!'
'Since you ask me why,' answered Mr. Van Torp, unmoved, 'I tell you all this because I want you to know more about me than you do. If you did, you'd hate me less. That's the plain truth. You know very well that there's nobody like you, and that if I'd judged I had the slightest chance of getting you I would no more have thought of marrying Miss Bamberger than of throwing a million dollars into the sea after that book, or ten million, and that's a great deal of money.'
'I ought to be flattered,' said Margaret with scorn, still facing the wind.
'No. I'm not given to flattery, and money means something real to me, because I've fought for it, and got it. Your regular young lover will always call you his precious treasure, and I don't see much difference between a precious treasure and several million dollars. I'm logical, you see. I tell you I'm logical, that's all.'
'I daresay. I think we have been talking here long enough. Shall we go back?'
She had got her anger under again. She detested Mr. Van Torp, but she was honest enough to realise that for the present she had resented his saying that Lushington's book was probably trash, much more than what he had told her of his broken engagement. She turned and came back to the ventilator, meaning to go around to her chair, but he stopped her.
'Don't go yet, please!' he said, keeping beside her. 'Call me a disgusting brute if you like. I sha'n't mind it, and I daresay it's true in a kind of way. Business isn't very refining, you know, and it was the only education I got after I was sixteen. I'm sorry I called that book rubbish, for I'm sure it's not. I've met Mr. Lushington in England several times; he's very clever, and he's got a first-rate position. But you see I didn't like your refusing the book, after I'd taken so much trouble to get it for you. Perhaps if I hadn't thrown it overboard you'd take it, now that I've apologised. Would you?'
His tone had changed at last, as she had known it to change before in the course of an acquaintance that had lasted more than a year. He put the question almost humbly.
'I don't know,' Margaret answered, relenting a little in spite of herself. 'At all events I'm sorry I was so rude. I lost my temper.'
'It was very natural,' said Mr. Van Torp meekly, but not looking at her, 'and I know I deserved it. You really would let me give you the book now, if it were possible, wouldn't you?'
'Perhaps.' She thought that as there was no such possibility it was safe to say as much as that.
'I should feel so much better if you would,' he answered. 'I should feel as if you'd accepted my apology. Won't you say it, Madame Cordova?'
'Well—yes—since you wish it so much,' Margaret replied, feeling that she risked nothing.
'Here it is, then,' he said, to her amazement, producing the new novel from the pocket of his overcoat, and enjoying her surprise as he put it into her hand.
It looked like a trick of sleight of hand, and she took the book and stared at him, as a child stares at the conjuror who produces an apple out of its ear.
'But I saw you throw it away,' she said in a puzzled tone.
'I got two while I was about it,' said Mr. Van Torp, smiling without showing his teeth. 'It was just as easy and it didn't cost me any more.'
'I see! Thank you very much.'
She knew that she could not but keep the volume now, and in her heart she was glad to have it, for Lushington had written to her about it several times since she had been in America.
'Well, I'll leave you now,' said the millionaire, resuming his stony expression. 'I hope I've not kept you too long.'
Before Margaret had realised the idiotic conventionality of the last words her companion had disappeared and she was left alone. He had not gone back in the direction whence they had come, but had taken the deserted windward side of the ship,
