“Why are you going out to be a missionary?” he suddenly asked.  Then he flushed painfully, remembering when too late that he had sworn to Hugh that he would not speak to her of the matter.  “I beg your pardon,” he hurried on; “I promised—­that is, I should not have asked you that question.  I forgot, hang my stupidity.”

“Mr. Veath, I am not going out to be a missionary.  Nothing was ever farther from my mind,” she said, rather excitedly.

“Not going to be a—­why, Hugh said you were.  There I go, giving him away again.”

“Hugh was jesting.  I a missionary!  How could you have believed him?”

“Are you in earnest?” he cried.

“Of course I am in earnest,” she said, trying to look straight in those bright eyes, but failing dismally.  Something in his glance dazzled her.  It was then that she knew the truth as well as if his mind were an open book.

“Why are you going to the Philippines?” he persisted.

She gave him a quick, frightened glance and as hastily looked away.  The red of confusion rushed to her cheeks, her brow, her neck.  What answer could she give?

“We are—­are just taking the trip for pleasure,” she stammered.  “Hugh and I took a sudden notion to go to Manila and—­and—­well, we are going, that’s all.”

“You don’t mean to say you are making this as a pleasure trip?” he asked, staring at her with a different light in his eyes.

“A mere whim, you know,” she hurried on.  “Look at those Arabs over there.”

“But a pleasure trip of this kind must be awfully expensive, isn’t it?” he insisted.

She hesitated for an instant and then said boldly:  “You see, Mr. Veath, Hugh and I are very rich.  It may not sound well for me to say it, but we have much more money than we know how to spend.  The cost of this voyage is a mere trifle.  Please do not think that I am boasting.  It is the miserable truth.”  His face was very pale when she dared to look up at it again, and his gaze was far off at sea.

“And so you are very rich,” he mused aloud.  “I thought you were quite poor, because missionaries are seldom overburdened with riches, according to tradition, or the gospel, or something like that.  This is a pleasure trip!” The bitterness of his tone could not be hidden.

“I am sorry if you have had an idol shattered,” she said.

“Something has been shattered,” he said, smiling.  “I don’t know very much about idols,” he added.  “How long do you expect to remain in Manila?”

“But a very short time,” she said simply.

“And I shall have to stay there for years, I suppose,” he returned slowly.  His eyes came to hers for a second and then went back to the stretch of water like a flash.  That brief glance troubled her greatly.  Her heart trembled with pity for the man beside her, even though speculation wrought the emotion.

In her stateroom that night she lay, dry-eyed and wakeful, her inward cry being:  “It is a crime to have wounded this innocent man.  Why must he be made to suffer?”