greater idealists than the generality of men, and possess the instinct of worship more strongly. They do not always make fortunes nor gain fame; but they make shrines. And deep in the nature of every one of them sits fast the belief that the finest woman in the world is surely for him because he has the finest shrine ready for her. If she does not fit, it is not the fault of the shrine, which is composed of the very best materials--that stuff of which dreams are made.

Garrett Westenra had all the bigoted simplicity of the man who has never loved and been deceived. There is nothing like a wrecked shrine or two for getting rid of unworkable notions about the uses of women as idols; but no woman had ever deceived him, so he had kept all his faith and bigotry and generous beliefs to bestow upon the one woman--a golden apple with a bitter core perhaps, for it is not always fair to the woman to have too much in this line to bestow. Being a citizen of the world he did not of course suppose that fine qualities and a beautiful nature are only to be found in the opening-rose type of woman, but certainly he had unconsciously or otherwise assigned to the woman of his dreams all the traditional virtues and graces of character and bearing. He had come of fine simple people: one of the old Irish families who through poverty and misfortune had lived for generations with the simplicity and austerity of peasants, but whose men had never lost their breeding and bearing, and whose women were strong and fearless without breaking the laws of their religion.

One of his ancestresses had eloped with a Westenra, and pursued by her disapproving brothers, the pair had swum a river abreast; later, when having fought one brother after the other the bridegroom, wounded in the legs, was unable to walk, his wife carried him on her back for miles to a place of safety--not that he was small and weak (no Westenra was ever that), but that she was big and strong and fine; her wedding ring, a thin thread of gold, had come down through generations to Garrett Westenra and fitted his third finger easily. His great-grandmother, daughter too of an old but impoverished family, had not disdained to rebuild with her own hands the house in which she afterwards lived and died. These were the single-hearted, simple, faithful women,

"Strong and quiet like the hills,"

from whom Westenra had sprung. Tradition dies hard when it is rooted in such firm ground. Small wonder that dismay blotted out delight when he recognised at last the romantic face of the woman he had waited for, only to find it allied to the strange, rootless, roving, almost vagrant personality of Valentine Valdana.

Even if every one on the ship except himself had not appeared to know that she was Mrs. Valdana the journalist, he could not long have remained in ignorance of her name for "Val Valdana" in writing so illegible as to invoke curiosity was written on everything she possessed, and she left her possessions everywhere. She was the most careless woman in the world. She lost and mislaid books, cushions, papers, and rugs; her shoes were frequently undone, and her hair almost always on the point of coming down. Yet she never looked untidy because her feet were pretty and her hair was of the feathery kind; and in the matter of her lost possessions she preserved entire calmness, for some one was always obliging enough to find them for her and bring them back. Once she left on deck a book full of audacious sketches and notes about the passengers, and the wind ruffling the leaves of it dispersed scraps of paper in every direction. One of these displayed a pair of love-birds sitting beak to beak on a branch, but the birds possessed the life-like features of two cranky old maid passengers who were continually squabbling in public; beneath was the scribbled legend: "If we comfort not each other, Who shall comfort us in the dark days to come?" ... Another entitled "La planche" was the portrait of an enormously fat lady passenger grown extraordinarily slim and pretty. A little pink hard-shelled woman with a habit of making up to people only to say something extremely unpleasant to them was cartooned as a crab reaching out and nipping everything within reach. A moony-looking individual with a wry neck, peering eyes, and a loud brown check suit had lent his individuality to the sketch of a tortoise pottering curiously about the deck. A newly-married couple who were always sipping egg-nog together had been pilloried as the Siamese twins joined by a large egg.

Yet when the cartoonist came on deck the victims of her pencil were all ready to smile at her, and return her property without resentment. It was so patent somehow that malice was the one thing absent from the mental make-up of Mrs. Valdana.

Another day soon after their first meeting, Westenra found her in her deck chair with one slim foot twisted round to inspect what is sometimes known as a "potato" in the heel of her stocking.

"Isn't it amazing how holes in one's stockings arrive?" she remarked to him pleasantly. "I would n't mind only I 've got such tender heels."

Impossible for a thoughtful man who has known poverty and carried memories of his mother's fingers worn with darning to imagine such a woman as a wife and mother. Plainly the shrine Westenra had built for the woman of his dreams could never be occupied by this one. No shrine could keep for long so restless a heart, nor fireside and cradle detain such wandering feet! As the days went by the likeness in fact that he had seen in her to his vision became blurred and faded. It was not difficult at last to persuade himself that his recognition of her had been a fantasy of his brain. Once the thought dismissed of any mystical bond between them, he could not help liking the incompetent, careless creature and finding pleasure in her society. She was a good companion: not gay herself so much as the cause of gaiety in others. She rarely said witty things, but it was surprising how witty others became in her company. Her art was of the kind that seems to underlie rather than break through the surface of conversation, leaving the best points for others to make. But sometimes when things were at their dullest she would suddenly send up a little sparkling rocket that lit the mental horizon and thrilled the surroundings with colour.

Westenra, whose native wit and eloquence needed little sharpening, was at his best with her, and he became his pleasant and extremely engaging self while enjoying to the full that charm in her that from the first he had not denied. Her ardent feeling for the ideal and the original was a spur to his intellect, and not only re-awoke his natural gaiety, but set stirring all his altruistic dreams. For there was greatness smouldering in Westenra, that needed only the right woman's hand to fan it into flame.

No one observing Mrs. Valdana listening, almost thirsting for all he had to say, would have guessed that as far as actual experience of life went, hers had been far wider and greater than his, for the usual results of experience--callous indifference or a calm philosophic outlook--were amazingly absent from her. She was vividly interested in life, and the more she saw of it, the less blasée she became; and because ideas interested her even more than experience she was deeply interested in Westenra.

If the latter had ever lived in England he would infallibly have recognised the name of Valentine Valdana as being that of one of the foremost