"Within thine all-embracing breast
Is hid one more forsaken nest;
While, in the sky, with folded wings,
The bird that left it sits and sings."
I paused; the occasion seemed so little suited to the sentiment, for around us was the idle excitement of leaving port. I was annoyed with myself for my share in the conversation so far. Mrs. Falchion's eyes had scarcely left that group around the captain's door, although she had appeared acutely interested in what I was saying. Now she said:
"You recite very well. I feel impressed, but I fancy it is more your voice than those fine sentiments; for, after all, you cannot glorify the dead body. Look at the mummy of Thothmes at Boulak, and think what Cleopatra must look like now. And please let us talk about something else. Let us—" She paused.
I followed the keen, shaded glance of her eyes, and saw, coming from the group by the captain's door, Galt Roscoe. He moved in our direction. Suddenly he paused. His look was fixed upon Mrs. Falchion. A flush passed over his face, not exactly confusing, but painful, and again it left him pale, and for a moment he stood motionless. Then he came forward to us. He bowed to me, then looked hard at her. She held out her hand.
"Mr. Roscoe, I think?" she said. "An old friend," she added, turning to me. He gravely took her extended hand and said:
"I did not think to see you here, Miss—"
"MRS. Falchion," she interrupted clearly.
"MRS. Falchion!" he said, with surprise. "It is so many years since we had met, and—"
"And it is so easy to forget things? But it isn't so many, really—only seven, the cycle for constitutional renewal. Dear me, how erudite that sounds! . . . So, I suppose, we meet the same, yet not the same."
"The same, yet not the same," he repeated after her, with an attempt at lightness, yet abstractedly.