considered myself justified in asking any lady to share--the prospective
estate. I think now that the real reason was that I never cared
sufficiently for any lady, since otherwise my selfishness would probably
have overcome my scruples, as it does to-night. Benita, for I will call
you so, if for the first and last time, I--I--love you.

"Listen now," he went on, dropping his measured manner, and speaking
hurriedly, like a man with an earnest message and little time in which
to deliver it, "it is an odd thing, an incomprehensible thing, but
true, true--I fell in love with you the first time I saw your face. You
remember, you stood there leaning over the bulwark when I came on board
at Southampton, and as I walked up the gangway, I looked and my eyes met
yours. Then I stopped, and that stout old lady who got off at Madeira
bumped into me, and asked me to be good enough to make up my mind if I
were going backward or forward. Do you remember?"

"Yes," she answered in a low voice.

"Which things are an allegory," he continued. "I felt it so at the time.
Yes, I had half a mind to answer 'Backward' and give up my berth in
this ship. Then I looked at you again, and something inside of me said
'Forward.' So I came up the rest of the gangway and took off my hat
to you, a salutation I had no right to make, but which, I recall, you
acknowledged."

He paused, then continued: "As it began, so it has gone on. It is always
like that, is it not? The beginning is everything, the end must follow.
And now it has come out, as I was fully determined that it should not do
half an hour ago, when suddenly you developed eyes in the back of your
head, and--oh! dearest, I love you. No, please be quiet; I have not