The Honorable Percival

								

kindled in susceptible bosoms. He had come to share the belief of his
mother that he possessed a rare degree of chivalry in protecting women
against himself.
But this impossible child of Nature either did not know the rules of
the game, or chose to ignore them. He would be forced to continue this
distasteful partnership memory, or else dissolve it with a casual
reference to the episode, which would dispose of it for good and all.
He had about decided upon the latter course when Fate forestalled him.
On his way down to luncheon he encountered Miss Boynton coming up the
companionway. Her hair, still damp, was hanging about her shoulders, and
she carried a bundle of bath-towels under her arm. Both stood politely
aside, then both started forward, meeting midway.
"I--I--beg your pardon," said Percival.
"What for?" she asked.
"For--for not recognizing you the other day." It was not in the least
what he had meant to say, but it was said, and he must go on as best he
could. "Not expecting to see you, you know, and all that."
She stood shaking her hair in the breeze and smiling. While she
evidently bore no resentment, she was not helping him out in his
apology.
"One sees so many faces in traveling," he went on lamely, "and all so
much alike."
"I'd have known your face anywhere," she said.
He took a step downward, but she did not move. Instead she leaned
nonchalantly against the wall and began braiding her hair.
"I know your name, too," she said, with a look half daring and half
quizzical. "I looked you up on the passenger-list."
"But how did you know--"
"Oh, it was easy to spot you. You were the only man on board who would
fit 'The Honorable Percival Hascombe and Valet.'"
Percival found her scoffing tone intolerable. He descended two more
steps, but she stopped him with a request.
"If you don't mind," she said, flinging the finished braid over her
shoulder, "I wish you'd write your grand name on my Panama hat sometime;
it's going to be a souvenir of the trip."
With an unintelligible answer, he made his escape. His worst fears were
realized: he had given an inch; she had taken an ell. The crack in the
shell of his privacy was widening alarmingly and peeping through, he
shuddered at what he saw.

IV
COUNTER-CURRENTS

Day after day the steamship Saluria sailed the most amiable of
seas. So clear was the atmosphere at times that a glimpse could be had
of the planet Venus disporting herself in the heavens at high noon. Life
on shipboard became permeated with that spirit of fellowship which is
apt to make itself felt the moment the restraints of convention are
lifted. Even the Honorable Percival succumbed in a measure to the
insidious charm of the long, lazy days that were punctuated only by the
ship's bells.
He was still an apparently indifferent spectator of all that was going