“So it is,” sighed Sid, with an inward smile, “that heaven leads us not into temptation.”
He did not seat himself at once, but walked the deck several turns, partly to reconnoitre the fair enemy, and partly with the heroic resolve of seeking out the deck steward and having his chair removed to a less perilous position. This extreme measure, however, struck him as both eccentric as well as cowardly, and the reconnaissance finally decided the matter. After all, the voyage so far had been dull enough, and his love for Rosamund surely called for no such fanatical self-denial.
So presently he found himself seated by the side of the apparition, pleasantly enveloped in a delicate exhalation of violets, and luxuriously conscious of the proximity of a beautiful, breathing woman. For a while the first conventional reserves protected him. He took up his book and appeared absorbed in it. She, too, was reading. One of those modern novels sufficiently artistic and emotionally speculative to arouse one’s interest in the personality of its reader, and to afford a ready freemasonry of communication between strangers not unwilling to make each other’s acquaintance.
After a brief preoccupation with literature, both readers lost interest in their books at the same moment, and both, with a bored sigh, allowed them to decline upon their steamer-rug knees, with an artfully synchronised sympathy. Then their eyes met, and two of a kind recognised each other and smiled. Nature had created them fully equipped flirts. They only needed to look at each other to know it; and, straightway, headlong, with the good excuse of marine ennui upon them, they followed the law of their natures—Sid, however, with a strong brake on, a restraint, which, with the comprehension of sorceresses, his companion felt and interpreted, and inwardly resolved to overcome.
“Strange, how everything is a bore at sea! even the most interesting book,” said the siren.
“Even the sea,” assented Sid.
“Have you really the courage to say that you think the sea ridiculously overrated?”
Sid had.
“I love courage,” she answered, looking at him in a laughing, challenging way.
“You necessitate it,” was the answer, according to the eternal formula; and so the sea began to be less of a bore, and continued being less and less so each succeeding day, till the last evening of the voyage had come.