Later, Van Lew rolled a cigarette and went to the smoking-compartment, which was in the forward end of the car; and when next Lidgerwood broke Miss Doty’s eye-hold upon him, Miss Brewster had also disappeared—­into her state-room, as he supposed.  Taking this as a sign of his release, he gently broke the thread of Miss Carolyn’s inquisitiveness, and went out to the rear platform for a breath of fresh air and surcease from the fashery of a neatly balanced tongue.

When it was quite too late to retreat, he found the deep-recessed observation platform of the Nadia occupied.  Miss Brewster was not in her state-room, as he had mistakenly persuaded himself.  She was sitting in one of the two platform camp-chairs, and she was alone.

“I thought you would come, if I only gave you time enough,” she said, quite coolly.  “Did you find Carolyn very persuasive?”

He ignored the query about Miss Doty, replying only to the first part of her speech.

“I thought you had gone to your state-room.  I hadn’t the slightest idea that you were out here.”

“Otherwise you would not have come?  How magnificently churlish you can be, upon occasion, Howard!”

“It doesn’t deserve so hard a name,” he rejoined patiently.  “For the moment I am your father’s guest, and when he asked me to go to Angels with him——­”

—­“He didn’t tell you that mamma and Judge Holcombe and Carolyn and Miriam and Herbert and Geof.  Jefferis and I were along,” she cut in maliciously.  “Howard, don’t you know you are positively spiteful, at times!”

“No,” he denied.

“Don’t contradict me, and don’t be silly.”  She pushed the other chair toward him.  “Sit down and tell me how you’ve been enduring the interval.  It is more than a year, isn’t it?”

“Yes.  A year, three months, and eleven days.”  He had taken the chair beside her because there seemed to be nothing else to do.

“How mathematically exact you are!” she gibed.  “To-morrow it will be a year, three months, and twelve days; and the day after to-morrow—­mercy me!  I should go mad if I had to think back and count up that way every day.  But I asked you what you had been doing.”

He spread his hands.  “Existing, one way and another.  There has always been my work.”

“‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,’” she quoted.  “You are excessively dull to-day, Howard.  Hasn’t it occurred to you?”

“Thank you for expressing it so delicately.  It seems to be my misfortune to disappoint you, always.”

“Yes,” she said, quite unfeelingly.  Then, with a swift relapse into pure mockery:  “How many times have you fallen in love during the one year, three months, and eleven days?”

His frown was almost a scowl.  “Is it worth while to make an unending jest of it, Eleanor?”

“A jest?—­of your falling in love?  No, my dear cousin, several times removed, no one would dare to jest with you on that subject.  But tell me; I am really and truly interested.  Will you confess to three times?  That isn’t so very many, considering the length of the interval.”