The man sat still for some long time, then suddenly sprang to his feet and went aft.
The dressing bugle had sounded but he had not heard; the dinner bugle had sounded and still he had not heard, as he stood at the stern watching the swirling wash of the slow-moving boat.
"Full moon, too! She was hauled from her bed gibbering in French or something."
He quoted the words, and crushed the letter savagely in his hands, for even in the fullness of his joy he remembered Leonie's words, "Terrible things happen wherever I am—they follow me." But in the greatness of his love he figuratively shrugged his shoulders, gathered his beloved into the safe haven of his arms, and closed the moonlit eyes with kisses.
Whilst a jet butterfly fluttered in vain over a very décolleté expanse which covered a heart agitated by rage and disappointment on the boat deck.
CHAPTER XXV
"And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee."—The Bible.
Leonie and her aunt were having tea at the Ladies' Union Club, of which the latter was almost an original member.
You know the place where, arriving on foot or with the trail of the omnibus upon you in the shape of a two-penny ticket grasped tightly in your right hand, you receive a stony stare as welcome from the hall porter, and one of dead fish glassiness from the rest of the staff.
There is a certain air of geniality diffused around a taxi arrival, but a car!—two or eight cylinder—owned, borrowed, or stolen, well! there you win in honours, no matter what kind of private address you camouflage with that of your club.