"What concern has a Perfect Pig with figures?" she asked wistfully, and lifted a hesitant hand in the darkness.
It fell lightly on his arm. In the soft gloom her face glimmered, dimly warm to his vision, upturned to his. The fog covered much that might otherwise have been seen, but failed to smother what might have been (and in fact was, as Judge Enderby and Dr. Alderson, turning the angle of the deck, halted and tactfully melted away) heard. To wit:—
"Oh!" in a feminine and tremulous pitch.
"Forgive me," said the Tyro hoarsely. "That was for good-bye."
Was it a detaining hand that went forth in the darkness? If so, it failed of its purpose, for the Tyro had gone.
Then and there Little Miss Grouch proceeded to pervert a proverb.
"Man proposes," she observed to herself, philosophically. "Maybe not always, though. But, anyway, woman disposes. I don't think that was really good-bye."
Behold now a complete reversal of conditions from the initial night of the voyage. For now it was the Tyro who went to bed, miserable and at odds with a hostile world; whereas Little Miss Grouch dreamed of a morrow, new, glorious, and irradiated with a more splendid adventurousness than her slave had ever previsioned.