"Be a sport, Miriam! I tell you we got the right to do it because we're
in love. We'll just tell them the truth, that at the last minute we--we
just couldn't let go. I'll do the talking, Miriam; I'll tell the old
folks."

"Ray she--"

"If you ain't afraid to start out on a hundred a month and commissions,
dear, we don't need to be scared of nothing. I'll tell them just the
plain truth, dear. Just think, if we do it now, when they come back in
ten weeks we can be down at the pier to meet them, eh, Miriam, just like
an--an old married couple--eh, Miriam--eh, Miriam, dear!"

She rose. A red seepage of blood flooded her face; her bosom rose and
fell.

"Are you game, Miriam? Are you, darling--eh, Miriam, eh?"

"Yes, Irving."

* * * * *

Alongside her pier, white as a gull, new painted, new washed, cargoed
and stoked, the _Roumania_ reared three red smoke-stacks, and sat
proudly with the gang-plank flung out from her mighty hip and her nose
tapering toward the blue harbor and the blue billows beyond.

Within the narrow confines of a first-deck stateroom, piled round with
luggage and its double-decker berths freshly made up, Mrs. Binswanger
applied an anxious eye to the port-hole, straining tiptoe for a wider