“I am very happy to be going to England,” she assured him. “I am looking forward to the country life immensely.”
“Fond of games?” he asked her.
“Riding and tennis are the extent of my accomplishments,” she replied. “I like those. And then, after a year or so, I shall hope to travel on the Continent. My aunt still has a great many friends in Paris.”
“One meets so many American women and girls in France and Italy,” he observed, “and so few men. Why are they such stay at homes?”
“They aren’t,” she explained. “They travel, but they want something out of it. They either prospect for mines, or look for markets, or something of that sort.”
“In a way then, they too have the adventurer’s instinct. I haven’t any head for business. When the war ended—I had been wounded twice and transferred into the Intelligence Department—it chanced that I was in Palestine, and I went on from there to Abyssinia. From there I visited some friends in Bombay, and when I got home my father and I planned my little adventure in China.”
“You certainly are some traveller,” she admitted smilingly.
“So was my father before me,” he confided. “He was in the Diplomatic Service for some time, and lived in Pekin during the days of the Monarchy.”
She suddenly looked around and saw the rising moon, a blood-red circle emerging with incredible swiftness from the edge of a black sea. She crossed the deck swiftly, waving to him to follow her. Halfway there he paused. She was standing full in the light shining through the uncurtained window of the Marconi room; tall, slim and white in the windless night—a curiously and wonderfully desirable vision. She turned and waved to him impatiently, a smile of invitation upon her lips, her eyes full of eager delight.
“Hurry!” she cried. “Isn’t it wonderful?”