“Besides,” I went on, ignoring her delicious smile, “I don’t intend to follow you.  I expect, on the contrary, to find myself beside you.  When I know where you are going, I shall accidentally turn up on the same steamer.  Accidents will happen.  Nobody can prevent coincidences from occurring.  You may marry me, or you may not; but if you don’t marry me, you can’t expect to curtail my liberty of action, can you?  You had better know the worst at once; if you won’t take me, you must count upon finding me at your elbow all the world over—­till the moment comes when you choose to accept me.”

“Dear Hubert, I am ruining your life!”

“An excellent reason, then, for taking my advice, and marrying me instantly!  But you wander from the question.  Where are you going?  That is the issue now before the house.  You persist in evading it.”

She smiled, and came back to earth.  “Oh, if you must know, to India, by the east coast, changing steamers at Aden.”

“Extraordinary!” I cried.  “Do you know, Hilda, as luck will have it, I also shall be on my way to Bombay by the very same steamer!”

“But you don’t know what steamer it is?”

“No matter.  That only makes the coincidence all the odder.  Whatever the name of the ship may be, when you get on board, I have a presentiment that you will be surprised to find me there.”

She looked up at me with a gathering film in her eyes.  “Hubert, you are irrepressible!”

“I am, my dear child; so you may as well spare yourself the needless trouble of trying to repress me.”

If you rub a piece of iron on a loadstone, it becomes magnetic.  So, I think, I must have begun to acquire some part of Hilda’s own prophetic strain; for, sure enough, a few weeks later, we both of us found ourselves on the German East African steamer Kaiser Wilhelm, on our way to Aden—­exactly as I had predicted.  Which goes to prove that there is really something after all in presentiments!

“Since you persist in accompanying me,” Hilda said to me, as we sat in our chairs on deck the first evening out, “I see what I must do.  I must invent some plausible and ostensible reason for our travelling together.”

“We are not travelling together,” I answered.  “We are travelling by the same steamer; that is all—­exactly like the rest of our fellow-passengers.  I decline to be dragged into this imaginary partnership.”

“Now do be serious, Hubert!  I am going to invent an object in life for us.”

“What object?”

“How can I tell yet?  I must wait and see what turns up.  When we tranship at Aden, and find out what people are going on to Bombay with us, I shall probably discover some nice married lady to whom I can attach myself.”

“And am I to attach myself to her, too?”

“My dear boy, I never asked you to come.  You came unbidden.  You must manage for yourself as best you may.  But I leave much to the chapter of accidents.  We never know what will turn up, till it turns up in the end.  Everything comes at last, you know, to him that waits.”