"Was she?" Ross seemed most indifferent. "I didn't notice her. I never look at other women when you're around, my dear."

Elinor laughed. "You goose!" But 'way deep down in her heart she couldn't help feeling a bit flattered.

It was just past tea-time on the big home-coming liner, and it might seem as if all of its voyagers were taking an afternoon stroll. There was only one more day—to-morrow—left of the voyage before Boston Harbor, and everyone was full of the repressed excitement and restlessness of getting home. The decks were alive with couples and single folk, passing and repassing in both directions; some very briskly in real constitutionals, and some much more leisurely as though merely for the occupation of movement.

But Ross felt very lazy. He had buried himself deep in his steamer-chair and refused to budge an inch when Elinor had suggested that they might join that strolling throng.

"I'm a married man now," he said, "and I don't have to worry about exercising to keep my figure. Besides, I had much rather sit here in the corner and hold your hand under the rug."

So Elinor had humored him about the sitting still, and arranged a fat pillow under his head the way he liked it best; but she had no intention of permitting that even so newly married a couple as themselves should be seen holding hands in broad daylight on a crowded deck. Whereat, Ross pretended to sulk; he tilted his cap far down over his eyes; thrust his hands deep into his coat pockets and sprawled full-length in his chair. Though instead of conveying to the passers-by any idea of displeasure, with anything or anybody, his attitude only succeeded in picturing lazy comfort.

Arethusa would hardly have known this Ross Worthington reclining so easefully in the steamer-chair as the original of her beloved photograph. She might have recognized the eyes, keen and bright in their glance as ever, and with the same debonair smiling; but the wavy dark hair was clipped as closely as the hair of any other male biped and had greyed a trifle just at the temples. He was less like a novelist's creation, and more like the men Arethusa had known in the flesh, in his appearance, certainly. For this older Ross Worthington had discarded Italian military capes and Byronic collars and flowing ties for more conventional attire. He was as commonplace and ordinary as to clothing, in every respect, as any other man on that huge steamship.

But Elinor Worthington would have attracted attention almost anywhere, and more than one of the pedestrians had given her a second glance of surreptitious admiration as they passed her. She was rather a wonderful looking person. Ross's raptures had not been altogether exaggeration. She had a world of soft white hair, pure white it was, worn simply coiled around a beautifully shaped head; its elderly color in strange and attractive contrast to the smooth youthfulness of her lovely skin. Her eyes were brown, a warm, dark brown, under long dark lashes and slightly arched dark eyebrows; and the tiny gleam of unmistakable fun that lurked in their quiet depths was again a contrast to the almost classical severity of finely cut features, straight nose, and delicately chiseled mouth, and cleanly rounded chin. And she was as graceful in her slender tallness as the girl she had admired—this woman of forty or more. It was small wonder that Ross had declared he loved to look at her.

Here in this corner with her husband, Elinor Worthington was all herself. She glowed like a rose, with none of the little stiffness in her manner she so often unfortunately showed to strangers and which only the discerning few correctly named as shyness. To the majority of people she was likely to seem cold, almost distant.

"What are you thinking about? You look so serious and far away," Ross remarked after an interval of silence.