"I was speaking categorically, not specifically; at least I meant to. I did not mean slumming; I detest it. '_Seine erfahrungen erweitern_'--enlarging one's experience--is the way my teacher put it. Life is so well-ordered with us. There are many well-defined things to do--any number of them. The trouble is, they are all so well defined. We glide along and take our switches, as father would say, like so many trains." She smiled. "And so I love to run off the track once in a while." "May I have the credit of having misplaced the switch?" Armitage's eyes were twinkling as the girl arose with a nod. In the upper cabin, Mrs. Wellington, apparently, still slept, to Armitage's great joy. Her daughter, with hardly a glance into the cabin, stepped to the rail and looked down the bay with radiant face. The promise of the early hours had been established; it was a beautiful day. It was one of these mornings typical of the hour; it looked like morning, smelt like morning, there was the distinct, clean, pure, inspiring feel of morning. The skies were an even turquoise with little filmy, fleecy shreds of clouds drifting across; the air was elixir; and the blue waters, capped here and there with white, ran joyously to meet the green sloping shores, where the haze still lingered. Ahead, an island glowed like an opal. "Perfect, perfectly stunning!" cried the girl. Somehow Armitage felt the absence of that vague barrier which, heretofore, she had seemed almost unconsciously to interpose, as her eyes, filled with sheer vivacity, met his. "What are those little things bobbing up and down in the water over there?" she asked. "I believe that is the torpedo testing ground," he said. "Torpedoes! Ugh!" She shrugged her shoulders. "Mother knew Vereshchagin, who was in the _Petrapavlovsk_ when she struck the Japanese torpedo and turned upside down. Do you know anything about torpedoes?" "Not much; a little." Armitage thrilled at the first sign she had given him that she considered or was in any way curious regarding his personality. She looked at him. "I am certain I have seen you before," she said. "You don't live in Newport?" "That is not my home," said Armitage. "I come from Kentucky. I am something of a wanderer, being a sort of fighter by profession." The girl started. "Not a prize fighter?" She glanced quickly at the handsome, square, fighting face, the broad chest and shoulders, and flushed. "Are you really that?" Armitage had intended to tell her he was a naval officer, but obsessed of the imp of mischief, he nodded. "I can imagine situations wherein I might fight for a prize." She overlooked what she regarded as the apparent modesty of his answer.