The sailors had lowered the gang-plank and were casting off the hawsers which held the steamer to the wharf. A wheezy donkey-engine was lowering boxes and bales through the forward hatch; on the river side a small puffing tug was slowly warping the _Norje_ into midstream. Ragna and the Prince could hear Captain Petersen on the bridge, now calling orders through the tube to the engine room, now bawling through his speaking-trumpet. His round face looked like an overgrown peony and Ragna said so, to her companion's amusement. "Is that the botany they teach you in Paris?" he asked. "Oh," she answered, laughing gayly, "Paris is a place where one learns many things!" "Even in a Convent?" "Even in a Convent." He shot a stealthy glance at her from under dropped lids--the girl was thoroughly innocent, there could be no doubt as to that. A smile twitched his moustache--the things Paris had taught him were not subjects usually included in the curriculum of a girls' school, and the piquancy of the contrast between his experience of _la Villa Lumière_ and that of Ragna amused him. He stood idly watching her--her face interested him, not from its prettiness alone--she was at the same time more and less than pretty. It was no doll's face, the cheek-bones were too high and prominent for the canons of perfect beauty, the mouth too large and the forehead too high, but there was an indescribable charm he did not seek to analyse--enough that it should be perceptible. He felt instinctively that though childlike in her mind Ragna was no fool, and that it would amuse him to draw her out. So he led her on to express her opinions on various subjects grave and gay, such as came up in their desultory conversation. The announcement of luncheon, by means of a cracked gong, was no interruption for the Captain excused himself on the ground that his presence was required on the bridge, and Count Angelescu barely joined in the conversation from time to time in response to a direct appeal from the Prince or from Ragna. The girl had lost all trace of shyness and was enjoying herself heartily in the highest of spirits, and Prince Mirko seemed more like a school-boy on a holiday than the heir to a kingdom on a diplomatic mission. He explained to Ragna that he was on his way to Stockholm, and from there to St. Petersburg. "But," he said, "that is all so appallingly serious that I am cutting capers while I may--I often cut them when I should not, don't I, Otto? And old 'Long face' there, tries to keep me in order; old 'Long face' does not approve of me now!" he laughed. Count Angelescu did not reply, nor did he even smile at the sally; he was not at all pleased by the rate at which the _camaraderie_ between the Prince and Ragna was progressing. He knew his Prince for a "coureur de cotillons" and scented danger from afar. "Fortunately we land the day after to-morrow," he thought. Two days is a short time, but much can happen in them.