is the invention of man: all the good, all the evil, in the heart of
this great humanity.




III

THE ADVENTURE BEGINS


It was only when the ship was less than a day's journey off Sandy
Hook that the colonel came on deck, once more to resume his interest
in human affairs. How the girl hovered about him! She tucked the
shawl more snugly around his feet; she arranged and rearranged the
pillows back of his head; she fed him from a bowl of soup; she read
from some favorite book; she smoothed the furrowed brow; she stilled
the long, white, nervous fingers with her own small, firm, brown
ones; she was mother and daughter in one. Wherever she moved, the
parent eye followed her, and there lay in its deeps a strange mixture
of fear, and trouble, and questioning love. All the while he drummed
ceaselessly on the arms of his chair.

And Mr. Robert, watching all these things from afar, Mr. Robert
sighed dolorously. The residue air in his lungs was renewed more
frequently than nature originally intended it should be. Love has its
beneficences as well as its pangs, only they are not wholly
appreciable by the recipient. For what is better than a good pair of
lungs constantly filled and refilled with pure air? Mr. Robert even
felt a twinge of remorse besides. He was brother to a girl almost as