face of tragedy.

"Was that true?" he demanded grimly.

"Was what true?" she asked, with baby eyes of wonder, which no longer
deceived, but angered.

"What the doctor said." Rudolph's voice trembled. "The tittle--the title
he gave you."

"Why, of course," she laughed.

"And you did not tell me!" he began, with scorn.

"Don't be foolish," she cut in. From beneath her skirt the toe of a
small white shoe tapped the deck angrily. Of a sudden she laughed, and
raised a tantalizing face, merry, candid, and inscrutable. "Why, you
never asked me, and--and of course I thought you were saying it all
along. You have such a dear, funny way of pronouncing, you know."

He hesitated, almost believing; then, with a desperate gesture, wheeled
and marched resolutely aft. That night it was no Prussian snores which
kept him awake and wretched. "Everything is finished," he thought
abysmally. He lay overthrown, aching, crushed, as though pinned under
the fallen walls of his youth.

At breakfast-time, the ship lay still beside a quay where mad crowds of
brown and yellow men, scarfed, swathed, and turbaned in riotous colors,
worked quarreling with harsh cries, in unspeakable interweaving uproar.
The air, hot and steamy, smelled of strange earth. As Rudolph followed a