Margaret was leaning over the bows with him, watching the prow rise and fall in splashes of orange and gold phosphorescence. The missionary was dozing in a chair somewhere astern. A score of coolies were gambling and talking loudly between decks.
“This is all so wonderful to me!” said Margaret, suddenly. “Only a month or two ago I was in Nebraska, but it seems years. I had never seen anything; I had no idea what a great and wonderful place the world was. I think of it all, and I sometimes wonder if I am the same girl. But do you know what it makes me think most?
“It makes me feel,” she went on, as Elliott did not reply, “how great and noble my father must be to have given his life to help this great, swarming heathen world. I never knew there were so many heathens; I thought they were mostly Methodists and Episcopalians. Don’t you think he really is the best man in the world?”
“I never saw a man so full of high ideals,” Elliott answered.
He had answered at random, scarcely listening to what she said. But the sound of her voice through the darkness had brought illumination to him, and he realized why he had shrunk from returning to the gold-hunt. He had found a higher ideal himself, and as he thought of his years and years of ineffectual, topsyturvy scrambling after a fortune which he would not have known how to keep if he had found, they seemed to him inexpressibly futile and childish. He had missed what was most worth while in life—but it was not too late. He hoped, and doubted, and his heart beat suddenly with an almost painful thrilling.
Her white muslin sleeve almost touched his shoulder, but her face was turned from him, looking wide-eyed toward the dark China coast. He knew that she was meditating upon the virtues of her evangelistic father. He did not speak, but she turned her head quickly and looked at him, with a puzzled, almost frightened glance.
“What’s the matter?” he said, almost in a whisper.
“I don’t know,” Margaret murmured, and her eyes dropped. For a moment she stood silent; she seemed to palpitate; then she roused herself with a little shrug.
“I am nervous to-night. For a moment I had a shudder—I felt as if something had happened, or was happening—I don’t know what. Come, let’s go back and find father. We’re nearly in.” She thrust her arm under his with a return to her usual frank confidence.
“I’m so glad you’re here, too,” she said, impulsively.