"No, not the last. I have changed my passage to the Saturday steamer."
The strange look came into her face again. Never before did blue eyes
wear such a look of scrutiny.
"Well, what is it?" I asked laughingly as I looked straight into her
eyes.
"The Saturday steamer," she said musingly--"the Algeria, isn't it? I
thought you were in a hurry?"
"It was my only chance to have you," I explained, and apparently the
argument was satisfactory enough.
With the saucy little upward toss with which she always dismissed a
subject, "Then it isn't good-bye to-night?" she said.
"Yes, for two days. I shall run over again on Thursday."
CHAPTER VII.
The two days passed, and the Thursday, and the Friday's parting,
harder for Bessie, as it seemed, than she had thought for. It was hard
to raise her dear little head from my shoulder when the last moment
came, and to rush down stairs to the cab, whose shivering horse and
implacable driver seemed no bad emblem of destiny on that raw October
morning.
I was glad of the lowering sky as I stepped up the gangway to the
ship's deck. "What might have been" went down the cabin stairs with
me; and as I threw my wraps and knapsack into the double state-room I
had chosen I felt like a widower.
It was wonderful to me then, as I sat down on the side of the berth
and looked around me, how the last two weeks had filled all the future
with dreams.
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