"The upshot of all this talk is, I suppose, that your shoulders are so strong, and your spirit so high, that you can at least take care of your own troubles."
"I hope so," she again laughed, "and be ready also to give you a lift. When you successful men do get a tumble in life, you are the most helpless of mortals."
"Well, well, well, to think that I am talking to little Madge, who could not say good-by to me without fainting away!"
"Good-by meant more to me than to you. You were going away to new and pleasant activity. I doubted whether I should see you again—or indeed any one long," she added, hastily.
"Don't imagine that I did not feel awfully that night, dear Madge. Tears do not come into my eyes easily, but I added a little salt water to the ocean as I leaned over the taffrail and saw the city that contained you fade from view."
"Did you truly, Graydon?" she asked, turning away.
"I did, indeed."
In her averted face and quickened respiration he thought he saw traces of more than passing feeling, but she turned on him in sudden gayety, and said: "Whenever I see the ocean I'll remember how its tides have been increased. Graydon, I've a secret to tell you, which, for an intense, aesthetic, and vaguely devotional woman, is a most humiliating confession: I'm awfully hungry. When will dinner be ready?"
"I have a secret to tell you also," he replied, with a half-vexed flash in his eyes: "There is a girl in this house who explains herself more or less every day, and who yet remains the most charming conundrum that ever kept a man awake from perplexity."
"Oh, dear!" cried Madge, "is Miss Wildmere so bad as that? Poor, pale victim of insomnia! By the way, do you and Mr. Arnault keep a ledger account of the time you receive? or do you roughly go on the principle of 'share and share alike'?" and with eyes flashing back laughter at his reddening face, she ran up the steps and disappeared.