CHAPTER XVI.

The steamer began to cut at last through the short curled waves, a bit of spray blown up on Neckart's mouth was salt, and, looking back, the great congregation of ships in the offing had dwindled to a few black spears of masts.

It was done, then! He had left all behind and cut loose, finally and for ever. He was glad that there was not a familiar face in the ship's company. The other passengers, looking critically at the well-known politician as he paced up and down, rated him as a keen, vigorous man in the maturity of power, wholly engrossed in affairs. He did not once think of the affairs of his own or any other country: he knew now but one fact--that the time was at hand when he must meet the fate to which he had looked forward so long, and that the sea must be between himself and Jane before that day came. But he was not likely to give any hint by appearance or words that this matter troubled him. There was a young mother with her first baby near him. God only knows what thoughts of Jane were in his mind as he looked at her. But he stopped to talk with her husband, who spoke to him about a shoal of porpoises; and afterward, when the captain inquired if health or pleasure took him from home, stated carelessly that it was a cerebral affection, and discussed the efficacy of some recommended bromide.

There was a lady sitting alone on the deck, a dark-green cloth dress belted neatly about a jimp figure, and cut short enough to show tight-laced boots: a close fur cap tied over her ears--an ugly little woman, but all alive and ready for action.

Something familiar in her carriage drew Neckart's eye to her a second time. She nodded and smiled: "You have quite forgotten me?"

"Miss Fleming! It is so many years since I saw you! Or ought I to say Miss Fleming?" looking about for her companion.

She laughed: "I am quite alone. On the ship, and everywhere else, for that matter. They are all gone, Mr. Neckart." She stopped abruptly and turned her head away. Cornelia never could speak of her mother without choking.

"I did not know," said Bruce gently. "It is long since I was at the homestead."

"Yes, there's nobody but me," she said presently with a nervous laugh. "I manage to support myself by art. It's poor support, and poorer art. But I have scraped together enough money to take me to Rome to make it better. With shawl-straps and a satchel American women can go anywhere, you know."

"You do not look like one of the modern Unas," glancing down. There was, on the contrary, a singular degree of femininity in this woman: he remembered now how it used to impress him as a boy. In the crowds that had filled his later years Cornelia's face had faded completely out of his mind. It began to come up now out of his boyhood, not unpleasantly, but rather with much of the glamour of those early days clinging to it. Yet he was annoyed that any old remembrance was to be kept awake during the voyage. He had meant to make it a lapse of absolute forgetfulness, and after that--what? "A season of dreadful looking-for of judgment," he found himself repeating as he talked civilly to Cornelia about the color of the water. He rose at last, being under such a nervous strain that he could not keep still.

"I shall go and beg the captain to give me a seat next yours at table," he said smiling. "I must take an oversight of you."

"Pray do not," she said anxiously, laying her hand on his sleeve. "I will not be a charge on anybody. Why, I am as independent as any--female doctor! Just let me come and go without notice, and if ever you feel like talking to me, don't think of me as a young lady, but only as somebody whom you used to know when you were a boy."

Neckart bowed and smiled. There was something very cordial and sweet in the little speech. Was it genuine nature that dictated it or only fine tact? In any case, he was glad to be relieved of the duty of paying _petits soins_ to any woman. Of course he would not neglect the poor creature, who appeared to be very lonely, and, in spite of her grotesque little swagger, as ill able to stand alone as any woman he had ever seen. He glanced at the homely attractive face looking far out to sea when he turned in his walk. The second time he caught her looking at him with a sadness and hunger in her eyes that drove the blood to his heart like a blow. What was that which had happened between them when they were both children? A love-affair? Absurd! It was impossible that any sane woman could remember such folly. With every drop of blood tingling hot within him he turned down the deck and buried himself in the crowd in the cabin. Why had she never married? But what did that matter to him? He did not come near her at the table, nor join her during the rest of the day. But why had she never married? Could it have been the thought of him which had kept her aloof and solitary all her life?

Miss Fleming was one of the last to forsake the deck that night. She was a good sailor, and not likely to lose any time by sickness. "I can't afford to lose any time," she said to herself, her lips making a thin seam across her face, as she sat hour after hour waiting for him to return. "What I do must be done now or never." She had taken every penny she had in the world to pay for this fortnight in the ship with him.

"I shall succeed," rising, her thin cheeks pale, but her eyes like coals of fire. As she went through the cabin she scowled at the pretty young girls, who, like the birds in the fable, had a thousand lures of innocence and beauty and plumage. She was Reynard with his one trick--friendship and whatever she hid behind it. "But I never failed yet," she said as she shut herself into the darkness of her state-room.