"Would I?" Miss Jennings's voice suddenly broke. "What's the use of my trying?" she demanded tearfully. "Bob's on the other side of the world now--taken up with another girl as likely as not. What's the good of asking me what I would do when I can't do it?" She was crying in earnest now. "Supposing--just supposing--" began Philip. "Oh, stop your supposing!" the girl blazed out passionately. "Don't you see I can't bear it? I want him! I'm frightened of everything, and I want Bob! And it's too late!" "Stay exactly where you are for about five minutes," commanded Philip. And he disappeared in the darkness. * * * * * A few minutes later Bath-Steward Brand was incurring the risk of ignominious expulsion from the service of the merchant marine by trespassing upon a portion of the deck strictly reserved for passengers. Philip went to bed. * * * * * Philip, leaning over the forward rail of the boatdeck and surveying the silhouette of New York, rising like a row of irregular teeth upon the distant horizon, talked to himself in order to keep his spirits up. "Theophilus, my lad,"--he liked to call himself by that name, because Peggy had sometimes used it,--"so far, your scheme of fresh friends and pastures new has turned out a fizzle. You took this trip in order to see new faces and make new friends, and generally put the past behind you. The net result is that you have not made a single new acquaintance. Instead, you have devoted your entire energies to interfering in the affairs of a second-class lady passenger and a bath-steward, neither of whom can be described under any circumstances as a new friend. You must make a real effort when you land." But Fate was against him. He descended to the saloon, and having there satisfied an Immigration official, sitting behind a pile of papers, that he was neither a pauper, a lunatic, nor an anarchist, could read and write, and was not suffering from any disease of the eyeball, he purchased one of the newspapers which the pilot had brought on board in the early morning, and retired to a sunny corner to occupy himself, after a week's abstention, in getting abreast of the news of the day. He unfolded the crackling sheet. It was his first introduction to that stupendous organ of private opinion, the American newspaper.... When he had recovered his breath, and the shouting scarelines had focussed themselves into some sort of proportion, he worked methodically through the entire journal, discovering ultimately, to his relief, that nothing very dreadful had happened after all. He had almost finished, when his eye fell upon a small paragraph at the foot of a column, with its headlines set in comparatively modest type. CUPID GETS BUSY IN THE STUDIO WELL-KNOWN BRITISH PAINTERS WED