I doubted whether I should see you again--or indeed any one long," she added, hastily.
"Don't imagine that I did not feel awfully that night, dear Madge.
Tears do not come into my eyes easily, but I added a little salt water to the ocean as I leaned over the taffrail and saw the city that contained you fade from view." "Did you truly, Graydon ?" she asked, turning away.
"I did, indeed." In her averted face and quickened respiration he thought he saw traces of more than passing feeling, but she turned on him in sudden gayety, and said: "Whenever I see the ocean I'll remember how its tides have been increased.

Graydon, I've a secret to tell you, which, for an intense, aesthetic, and vaguely devotional woman, is a most humiliating confession: I'm awfully hungry.

When will dinner be ready ?" "I have a secret to tell you also," he replied, with a half-vexed flash in his eyes: "There is a girl in this house who explains herself more or less every day, and who yet remains the most charming conundrum that ever kept a man awake from perplexity." "Oh, dear!" cried Madge, "is Miss Wildmere so bad as that?
Poor, pale victim of insomnia! By the way, do you and Mr.Arnault keep a ledger account of the time you receive?
or do you roughly go on the principle of 'share and share alike' ?" and with eyes flashing back laughter at his reddening face, she ran up the steps and disappeared.
"That was a Parthian arrow," he muttered.

"If we go smoothly on the sharing principle at present, we shall soon go roughly enough, or cease to go at all." But the lady in question was putting forth all her resources, which were not slight when enlisted in her own behalf, to keep the two men _in statu quo_ until more time, with its chances, should pass.
Arnault smiled grimly when he saw her departing with Graydon.

She had been evasive, but very friendly, during the day thus far, and after what he had said the preceding night he felt that he was committed to her moods for a week if he could not bring her to a decision before.
Seeing Mr.Wildmere walking restlessly up and down the piazza, he joined him, and offering a superb cigar, said, "Suppose we go out to the lake and see where the little kid was so nearly drowned." Soon after they were smoking in the shade, the thoughts of both reverting to kindred anxieties.