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“I wish you were not going on the stage, all the same,” he continued, doggedly.

“You think I will be a failure? Well, perhaps; you never can tell. But I have a card up my sleeve—I know that’s a proper expression, for I’ve heard you say it—and it may turn out a very good one.”

“You mean your voice! Well, why don’t you let me hear it.”

“Perhaps I will now that we are on dry land. I can’t sing at sea.”

“That’s a promise, then. Look at that steamer coming round the point. She brings the mail from Bombay, I expect. There is our old ‘Suez’ lying close in under the lighthouse. She will be here for another forty-eight hours, the captain tells me, to get her machinery overhauled. So much the better for us, to have two days more of your Paradise.” He smiled, and Alice replied in the same language, feeling more friendly with “ce beau Campbell” than ever before during their three weeks’ sojourn on the waves together. But as they watched the lights of the Indian mail-boat slowly coming through the purple haze, Fate was already cutting the light thread of association which she had so carelessly thrown together over these two dissimilar young people. They did not know that