The girl lifted her head quickly, gave a swift look of recognition, a brief smile of gratitude, and continued her pace.  She had not taken his arm, but had grasped the handle of the umbrella, which linked them together.  Not a word was spoken.  Two people cannot be conversational or sentimental flying at the top of their speed beneath a single umbrella, with a crowd of impatient passengers watching and waiting for them.  And I grieve to say that, being a happy American crowd, there was some irreverent humor.  “Go it, sis!  He’s gainin’ on you!” “Keep it up!” “Steady, sonny!  Don’t prance!” “No fancy licks!  You were nearly over the traces that time!” “Keep up to the pole!” (i. e. the umbrella).  “Don’t crowd her off the track!  Just swing on together; you’ll do it.”

Randolph had glanced quickly at his companion.  She was laughing, yet looking at him shyly as if wondering how he was taking it.  The paddle wheels were beginning to revolve.  Another rush, and they were on board as the plank was drawn in.

But they were only on the edge of a packed and seething crowd.  Randolph managed, however, to force a way for her to an angle of the paddle box, where they were comparatively alone although still exposed to the rain.  She recognized their enforced companionship by dropping her grasp of the umbrella, which she had hitherto been holding over him with a singular kind of mature superiority very like—­as Randolph felt—­her manner to the boy.

“You have left your little friend?” he said, grasping at the idea for a conversational opening.

“My little cousin?  Yes,” she said.  “I left him with friends.  I could not bear to make him run any risk in this weather.  But,” she hesitated half apologetically, half mischievously, “perhaps I hurried you.”

“Oh, no,” said Randolph quickly.  “This is the last boat, and I must be at the bank to-morrow morning at nine.”

“And I must be at the shop at eight,” she said.  She did not speak bitterly or pointedly, nor yet with the entire familiarity of custom.  He noticed that her dress was indeed plainer, and yet she seemed quite concerned over the water-soaked state of that cheap thin silk pelerine and merino skirt.  A big lump was in his throat.

“Do you know,” he said desperately, yet trying to laugh, “that this is not the first time you have seen me dripping?”

“Yes,” she returned, looking at him interestedly; “it was outside of the druggist’s in Montgomery Street, about four months ago.  You were wetter then even than you are now.”

“I was hungry, friendless, and penniless, Miss Avondale.”  He had spoken thus abruptly in the faint hope that the revelation might equalize their present condition; but somehow his confession, now that it was uttered, seemed exceedingly weak and impotent.  Then he blundered in a different direction.  “Your eyes were the only kind ones I had seen since I landed.”  He flushed a little, feeling himself on insecure ground, and ended desperately:  “Why, when I left you, I thought of committing suicide.”