class="line">One look or none did you bestow

He understood the listener in those lines with the imagination of one who in a city office or hospital can hear the sounds of birds and insects, and feel the wind of the moors on his face and see the gloom of trees. The dark waves of the Atlantic had often seemed to him symbolic of the Irish nature; dark and sad to the outward view, but when the wind ruffles the surface showing light and beauty beneath, secret inner palaces of green crystal.

But to-night his loneliness oppressed him as never before. It seemed to him he had waited too long in a land of dreams and shadows. He left the sea and stars at last and went to his cabin.

At dinner for the first time since the boat sailed the seat next his own was occupied, though he scarcely noticed the fact until he found himself sitting beside a woman. A young woman he saw at once by her hands, all that he could see of her very well, for however curious a man may be it is difficult for him to take the bearings of a person with whom he is seated cheek by jowl. Westenra was not at all curious, but even when he was the dreamiest of Irishmen he was also a trained observer, and to take notes on the people with whom he came in contact whilst apparently absorbed in his own affairs was as natural to him as breathing. He could almost make a diagnosis from a hand, and the next deductions he drew from the slim ones of his neighbour were not all so pleasing as the first. For one thing he saw that she was an intensely nervous woman, even though she spent so much time out of doors, ungloved, that her hands were burnt to a pale brown tint. They were more like a boy's hands than a woman's, except that they were so nervously febrile and covered with rings. The rings called for attention. They were odd and barbaric, and of far greater beauty than value, for most of the stones were semi-precious, and their charm lay in their quaint settings and brilliant colouring. There were miniatures surrounded by amethysts, marquise rings of blue and green enamel with devices in rose-diamonds, olivines and sardonyx set with seed-pearls and an Angelica Kauffman under a crystal. On the thumb of her right hand she wore a very fine black scarab heavily set in platinum, and on the index finger of the same hand a silver ring of rough workmanship made in the shape of a V with a stone like an uncut ruby imbedded in the point of the letter. Nothing so commonplace as a wedding ring was to be observed amongst this eccentric collection. The forefingers of her left hand were faintly tinted with the amber of nicotine.

"Smokes too much," thought Westenra, and might have supposed her left-handed but for a worn, hard little mark on her right middle finger. "Writes, and smokes while she 's writing," he deducted, and thought none the better of her for that. When she ordered a brandy-and-soda to drink with the sardine she was dissecting he liked her still less.

"She won't be in the game long at that rate," he estimated grimly. "With her nerves I 'll give her another two years at most." He hated to see women drink. Experience had taught him that few of them can do it long without going to pieces morally. And here was one who would certainly go to pieces physically as well. On this conclusion he felt no further inclination for observations. But that did not prevent him from hearing what she had to say. She had struck up a little conversation with the man on the other side of her, speaking in a nervous contralto voice that, without being throaty, contained a curious husky tremor giving almost the suggestion that she wore a veil over it. Without the assistance of his previous deductions Westenra would have known it at once for the voice of a temperamental woman, as well as that of a woman of the world; and was the more astonished therefore, at her free bon camarade manner with her neighbour, a French Jew with a mean expression on a clever face--a financier or dealer in jewels Westenra judged, and a none too scrupulous one at that. They talked about the ice on the table and where it had come from. The Jew was not sure whether it was Norwegian ice or manufactured on the boat, but was full of information about the New York supply and the great frozen lakes from which it was cut in enormous blocks.

"I must go and see them!" said the woman eagerly, "and the far solitary tracts of ice and snow in Alaska! I must see them."

She talked like a woman who had fever in her veins.

"You like cold places?" asked the Jew curiously.

"No! No! I hate cold, but I like wide, solitary, empty lands and countries I have never been to. I would love to wake up every morning of my life in afresh place."

Westenra admired reserve in a woman, and was thoroughly astounded at such a lack of it. There was worse to come. Her friendly candour revived the French heart of the Jew to a corresponding friendliness which by some persons might have been considered impertinent, but did not seem in the least to offend this one.

"Excuse me, mad'moiselle, but I never saw such original bracelets. Might one ask what they are made of?"

"Ivory," she answered pleasantly. "I got them in Central Africa. They were cut green from an elephant's trunk."

"Elephant's trunk!" murmured the Jew, and even Westenra had to smile.

"Oh! tusk I mean, of course. And the red things imbedded in them are garnets from De Beers's Mine in Kimberley. I think they are ever so much nicer than diamonds, don't you?"

The Jew tried to look as if he did, and succeeded fairly well.

"Here is another in my silver ring. A Zulu made this ring for me in Natal, out of a half-crown. I gave him the garnet to put in, and another half-crown for making it."

If the Jew were outraged at the idea of any lady wearing such cheap jewellery, he concealed his feelings under a silky smile.

"Then you know Africa, mad'moiselle?"

"I know every country except America," she said. "But I think Africa is the only one in the world that I could stay in always without getting bored."

"Ah! Is it Johannesburg you like?"

"Oh, no--Rhodesia--Zululand--the Drakenberg Mountains--the open veldt."

The Jew stared.

"For a lady you have been to very unusual places," he commented, and if the words were ambiguous the tone was not lacking in courtesy.

"I love to travel," she said, "and it is my business to see things and places. I am a journalist."

"Indeed!" said the Jew, and stared again, for she was quite unlike any journalist he had ever met or heard of. But she gave him no time for any further astonished questions.

"I must go," she said abruptly. "This saloon is too hot." Smiling pleasantly at him she drank up her brandy-and-soda and departed, the Jew rising up also and bowing her out of her seat in a way that Westenra considered officious, yet could not but notice that with a courteous smile on him the fellow was not so mean-looking after all. The Irishman gave a glance after the