It was ten o’clock before he contrived, to escape Mrs. Weston’s vigilant eye and whisk Bobby off to a certain favored nook on the boat-deck just outside the captain’s state-room.  Here they had spent many happy evenings, notwithstanding the fact that their figures, silhouetted against the light, had never failed to provoke the captain to a profanity that was not always inaudible.

To-night, however, the captain was detained below, and they had the entire Yellow Sea to themselves as they sat on a projecting ledge and leaned their elbows comfortably on the rail.

It was an enticing night, with nothing left of the recent storm save a subtle thrill that still lingered in wind and wave.  Overhead spread a canopy of luminous, subtropical stars; in undisturbed silence they gazed up at their brilliance.  From below floated faint strains of music mingling with the sound of rippling:  water.

“And to think it’s our very last night!” murmured Bobby, her chin on her palm.  “I’ll never bear ‘La Paloma’ that I sha’n’t think of this trip and of you.”

Percival dared not answer.  He had reached that stage when, according to the philosopher, the moonlight is a pleasing fever, the stars are letters, the flowers ciphers, and the air is coined into song.  He regarded her gaze as she bent it upon the stars as the most exquisitely pensive thing he had ever behold.

“My! but there are some dandy billiard-shots up there!” she exclaimed suddenly.  “Do you see that lovely carom over there beyond the Dipper?”

“I am not thinking of caroms,” he said impatiently, “I am thinking of you.”

“What have I done now?” she asked indignantly.

“You’ve made me forget that there’s anything else in the whole universe but just you!”

“And now you’ve got to begin to remember,” said Bobby, sympathetically.

He searched her face for a clue as to what was passing in her mind, but he found none.

“You are a most awfully baffling girl,” he said.  “Sometimes I can’t determine whether you are subtle or merely ingenuous.”

“I’d give it up,” advised Bobby.

“But I sha’n’t give it up.  I sha’n’t be content until I know every little corner of your mind and heart.”

She stirred uneasily.  From, the way he was looking at her it was evidently a good thing that his near arm was in a sling.

“You need a cigar,” she said soothingly.  “Get one out; I’ll light it for you.”

He obediently produced his cigar-case, and together they selected a cigar.  She made a great point of cutting off the end, and then, when he had got it into his mouth, she struck a match and, sheltering the blaze with her scarf, held it close.  The sudden intimacy of that beautiful face in the little circle of light, with the darkness all around, was quite too much for Percival.  He looked straight into her eyes for one resolution-breaking second, then he blew out the match and catching her to him, passionately kissed those smiling, upturned lips.