Miriam struck a fusee, and Van Duren bit the end off a cigar and lighted it. A little table was between them, on which stood a bottle of sparkling hock and two glasses. The evening was closing in, but the sun had not yet set, and the broad bosom of the river lay fair and clear before them, with its steamers, and lighters, and pleasure-boats, and incoming or outgoing ships, passing to and fro unceasingly--a never-ending panorama, abounding with life, colour, and variety. "I wonder whether you will always be as indulgent to me as you are to-day," said Van Duren, as he exhaled a long curl of fragrant smoke. "That would depend upon whether you were always as good as you have been to-day." "I want you, this afternoon," he said, "to tell me where you would like us to spend our honeymoon." "As we have not yet agreed that there is to be a honeymoon, the question where we shall spend it seems to me slightly premature." "Let us be like children for once, and make believe. Let us make believe that you and I are going to be married in a month from now, and that I have asked you where you would like to spend the honeymoon." Miriam did not answer for a few moments, but sat with one finger pressed to her lips, a pretty embodiment of perplexity. "Really, I don't know," she said--"I don't know where I should like to go. So long as I got away to some strange place, I don't think I should care much where it was." "How would Paris suit you?" "Yes--yes!" cried Miriam, clapping her hands. "I should like to go to Paris above all places in the world. To see the shops, and the toilettes, and the gay crowds, and--and the hundreds of other attractions: that would suit me exactly." "Many ladies, at such times, prefer some quiet nook either in the country or at the seaside." "Yes, prefer to bury themselves alive, in fact. But that would not suit me, however much I might like my husband. In such a case, I am quite certain that by the end of the first week I should begin to think him a great stupid, and I am equally sure that he would already have discovered with what a shallow-pated individual he had mated himself for life. The experiment would be far too dangerous a one for me." "A very neatly-framed excuse for preferring Paris to Bognor or Bowness," said Van Duren, with a smile. "How cleverly you unravel my motives! But I think I told you before that I was shallow. Be warned in time!" "I have never heeded warnings all my life. I have always preferred keeping my own headstrong course." "In other words, you are obstinate." "Some of my friends call me pig-headed--but that is sheer malice." "How beautiful the river looks this afternoon!" said Miriam, a moment or two later. "I never look on an outward-bound ship without feeling a sort of vague longing to be on board her, sailing away into that strange world of which I know so little."