II

INTRODUCES MY HEROINE


Let me begin at the beginning. The boat had been two days out of
Southampton before the fog cleared away. On the afternoon of the
third day, Warburton curled up in his steamer-chair and lazily viewed
the blue October seas as they met and merged with the blue October
skies. I do not recollect the popular novel of that summer, but at
any rate it lay flapping at the side of his chair, forgotten. It
never entered my hero's mind that some poor devil of an author had
sweated and labored with infinite pains over every line, and
paragraph, and page-labored with all the care and love his heart and
mind were capable of, to produce this finished child of fancy; or
that this same author, even at this very moment, might be seated on
the veranda of his beautiful summer villa, figuring out royalties on
the backs of stray envelopes. No, he never thought of these things.

What with the wind and the soft, ceaseless jar of the throbbing
engines, half a dream hovered above his head, and touched him with a
gentle, insistent caress. If you had passed by him this afternoon,
and had been anything of a mathematician who could straighten out
geometrical angles, you would have come close to his height had you
stopped at five feet nine. Indeed, had you clipped off the heels of
his low shoes, you would have been exact. But all your nice