However, trailing along in the deepening dusk behind the fat brute, who was rowing hard against the current, they saw the dripping survivors of the shipwreck reach the wharf safely five minutes ahead of them, and scurry off into the darkness of the street.

Maurice, in high spirits, had quite forgiven Eleanor.  “I meant to treat you to ice cream, Skeezics,” he said, “but I can’t go into the hotel.  Shirt sleeves wouldn’t be admitted in the elegant circles of the Mercer House!”

Instantly a very youthful disappointment readjusted things for Edith; she forgot that strange consciousness which had made her shrink from his careless touch; she had no impulse to say “sir”; she was back again at the point at which the red-cheeked lady had broken in upon their lives.  She said, frowning:  “My!  I did want some ice cream.  I wish you hadn’t given the lady your coat!”

When Maurice got home, he found a repentant Eleanor bathing very red and swollen eyes.

“How’s your head?” he said, as he came, in his shirt sleeves, into her room; she, turning to kiss him and say it was better, stopped short.

“Maurice!  Where’s your coat?”

His explanation deepened her repentance; “Oh, Maurice,—­if you’ve caught cold!”

He laughed and hugged her (at which Bingo, in his basket, barked violently); and said, “The only thing that bothered me was that I couldn’t treat Edith to ice cream.”

Eleanor’s face, passionately tender, changed sharply:  “Edith is an extremely impertinent child!  Did you hear her, at dinner, talk about jealousy?”

He looked blank, and said, “What was ‘impertinent’ in that?  Say, Star, the girl in the boat was—­tough; she was painted up to the nines, and of course it all came out in the wash.  And Buster said her ’cheeks came off’!  But she was pretty,” Maurice ruminated, beginning to pull off his boots.

“I don’t see how you can call a painted woman ‘pretty,’” Eleanor said, coldly.

Maurice yawned.  “She seemed to belong to the fat brute.  He was so nasty to her, I wanted to punch his head.”

“Poor girl!” Eleanor said, and her voice softened.  “Perhaps I could do something for her?  She ought to make him marry her.”

Maurice chuckled.  “Oh, Nelly, you are innocent!  No, my dear; she’ll paint some more, and then, probably, get to drinking; and meet one or two more brutes.  When she gets quite into the gutter, she’ll die.  The sooner the better!  I mean, the less harm she’ll do.”

Eleanor’s recoil of pain seemed to him as exquisite as a butterfly’s shrinking from some harsh finger.  He looked at her tenderly.  “Star, you don’t know the world!  And I don’t want you to.”

“I’d like to help her,” Eleanor said, simply.

“You?” he said; “I wouldn’t have you under the same roof with one of those creatures!”