“About one, I believe—­there’s a consensus of stewards to that effect, anyway.”  After a pause he asked, “Are you likely to be in Carlsbad?”

“We are going to Dresden, first, I believe.  Then we may go on down to Vienna.  But nothing is settled, yet.”

“Are you going direct to Dresden?”

“I don’t know.  We may stay in Hamburg a day or two.”

“I’ve got to go straight to Carlsbad.  There’s a sleeping-car that will get me there by morning:  Mr. Stoller likes zeal.  But I hope you’ll let me be of use to you any way I can, before we part tomorrow.”

“You’re very kind.  You’ve been very good already—­to papa.”  He protested that he had not been at all good.  “But he’s used to taking care of himself on the other side.  Oh, it’s this side, now!”

“So it is!  How strange that seems!  It’s actually Europe.  But as long as we’re at sea, we can’t realize it.  Don’t you hate to have experiences slip through your fingers?”

“I don’t know.  A girl doesn’t have many experiences of her own; they’re always other people’s.”

This affected Burnamy as so profound that he did not question its truth.  He only suggested, “Well; sometimes they make other people have the experiences.”

Whether Miss Triscoe decided that this was too intimate or not she left the question.  “Do you understand German?”

“A little.  I studied it at college, and I’ve cultivated a sort of beer-garden German in Chicago.  I can ask for things.”

“I can’t, except in French, and that’s worse than English, in Germany, I hear.”

“Then you must let me be your interpreter up to the last moment.  Will you?”

She did not answer.  “It must be rather late, isn’t it?” she asked.  He let her see his watch, and she said, “Yes, it’s very late,” and led the way within.  “I must look after my packing; papa’s always so prompt, and I must justify myself for making him let me give up my maid when we left home; we expect to get one in Dresden.  Good-night!”

Burnamy looked after her drifting down their corridor, and wondered whether it would have been a fit return for her expression of a sense of novelty in him as a literary man if he had told her that she was the first young lady he had known who had a maid.  The fact awed him; Miss Triscoe herself did not awe him so much.

XVIII.

The next morning was merely a transitional period, full of turmoil and disorder, between the broken life of the sea and the untried life of the shore.  No one attempted to resume the routine of the voyage.  People went and came between their rooms and the saloons and the decks, and were no longer careful to take their own steamer chairs when they sat down for a moment.