much as she had told the Jew and he found in that too something to resent. Possibly she missed the French receptivity, or with the quicksilver sensitiveness of some women divined antagonism, for something like a little note of appeal came presently into her voice: it was as though she were trying to soften his heart towards her. In answer to some observation of his with regard to travelling she said rather wearily:

"Yes; one discovers these things when one has knocked about the world long enough."

"Knocking about the world" was not a process that usually enhanced a woman's charm, in his eyes at least; but he soon became aware that all charm was far from being knocked out of this one. Charm came out of her like a perfume, and stole towards him. But he steeled his heart against it and against her, so that a glint of the steel presently came into his eyes and seemed to ring in his voice. Certainly something in him chilled the little tendrils of good fellowship and friendliness that she seemed inclined to extend. At last shivering slightly and drawing her cloak about her, she stirred in her chair, preparing to go. But he stayed her with an odd and unexpected question.

"Do you always wear grey?"

She laughed and turned to look at him curiously.

"Now I wonder what makes you ask such a strange question?"

Enraged with himself, resentful of her, he was far from any intention of telling her his real reason.

"It hardly seems to be your colour." He spoke abruptly and realised immediately that he was being rude. But she was not offended at the wry compliment. Whatever her faults might be she seemed at least to be untroubled by that one paramount in most women--vanity.

"Are you an artist?" She leaned forward and looked at him with the free curiosity of a child.

"No."

She waited an instant as though expecting to hear him supplement his curt answer, but her frank impulsive methods waked no answering echoes, and she sank back with a little sigh. He felt ashamed of his churlishness. Never before had he been so unresponsive to friendly advances; but apart from his instinct not to allow this woman to probe him, it had always been a principle with him never to disclose his profession to fellow-travellers. When he came abroad it was to rest, and he had found that the best way of doing so was to keep his identity dark from the world at large. However, his taciturnity if it chilled her could not make her change her manners and customs.

"You are quite right," she said at last, speaking as though there had been no awkward interlude. "Grey is not my colour. I always wear blues and reds and oranges--anything bright and Oriental: not only because I am pale but because I love vivid colours. If when I am unhappy I put on something crimson it seems to warm and cheer my heart like a fire. Don't you think the robin is happier for his red breast?"

Westenra said nothing. She had switched his mind off oddly to the things he loved in his boyhood--birds hopping in the garden, the robin's note--a rabbit flashing past through the dewy grass.

"If ever you are in deep despair and can see a field of poppies all glad and aflare under the blaze of the sun----"

She appeared to have forgotten him and to be talking to herself. He too was away amongst the dews and tender sunshine of Ireland. He knew no blazing fields of poppies, but remembered them gay amongst the corn in the long fields.

"Or sunlight on fields of glowing corn," she said softly, "green land growing right down to the blue sea--trees turning to red and gold in the autumn--a bank of purple irises--gilded aloes spiking against the sky."

There was a strange little dreaming silence.

"I never had a grey gown in my life until now," she said suddenly.

Westenra looked pale in the starlight; there seemed almost to be in his skin a tinge of the colour she mentioned. Her words switched him back too suddenly from Ireland to a remembrance of her unwarranted likeness to his dream woman. She had even gone so far as to talk in the way that woman might have done! To pretend that she cared for the things that woman would care for!

"What made you get one now?" He knew not what fatalistic curiosity prompted the question.

"I got several," she said quietly. Her manner was still friendly, but there had come into it a certain graveness that he thought might be intended by way of rebuke, until he heard the end of her sentence. "You will never see me in any other colour on this ship. I am wearing grey as a sort of mourning for my husband."

"I beg your pardon," he said slowly, startled, astounded, and puzzled. A widow! Oh! She could n't be the woman he had dreamed--the whole thing was ridiculous! Grey for mourning? That was new to him. But perhaps the fellow had been dead a long time, and she was just going out of mourning? As if in answer to his thoughts she made another of her curious statements.

"We had been such bitter enemies that I felt it would be hypocritical to go into real mourning for him. But he died a fine death, and in honour of that I thought I might at least absent me awhile from the felicity of bright colour."

She rose to say good-night, and as she stood there looking at him for a moment with her elusive Irish smile and her Oriental air, he saw that, tell himself what he might, widow or no widow, hers was indeed the face he knew so well. The long shadows thrown by the lights behind her fell about her feet recalling the vulture shadows of his dream. Her cloak flickered round her like a silken sail, and the beads about her neck swung and softly clicked as dice might click in the hands of Fate.

CHAPTER II

GREY AND GOLD

"Two shall be born the whole wide world apart,

And speak in different tongues, and have no thought

Each of the other's being, and no heed;

And these, o'er unknown seas to unknown lands

Shall cross, escaping wreck, defying death;

And all unconsciously shape every act

And bend each wandering step to this one end--

That one day, out of darkness they shall meet,

And read life's meaning in each other's eyes."

 

There are few men who in thinking ahead, however vaguely, to the time when they will share life with a woman do not expect to find their ultimate kingdom in the heart of some girl with a face like the morning and a nature fresh and unspoiled as an opening rose. With the freshness faded from his own heart and the "songs of the morning" long forgotten, this modest instinct to allot to himself the beautiful and the ideal remains deeply rooted in the best and worst of men. Of Irishmen it should be said in extenuation that they are usually