“You must try to find out for yourself by deduction,” he said, “as you picked out the other passengers.  I am going to Grasse,” he continued.  “It’s the capital of Hohenwald.  Do you know it?”

“Yes,” she said; “we were there once for a few days.  We went to see the pictures.  I suppose you know that the old Duke, the father of the present one, ruined himself almost by buying pictures for the Grasse gallery.  We were there at a bad time, though, when the palace was closed to visitors, and the gallery too.  I suppose that is what is taking you there?”

“No,” Carlton said, shaking his head.  “No, it is not the pictures.  I am going to Grasse,” he said, gravely, “to see the young woman with whom I am in love.”

Miss Morris looked up in some surprise, and smiled consciously, with a natural feminine interest in an affair of love, and one which was a secret as well.

“Oh,” she said, “I beg your pardon; we—­I had not heard of it.”

“No, it is not a thing one could announce exactly,” said Carlton; “it is rather in an embryo state as yet—­in fact, I have not met the young lady so far, but I mean to meet her.  That’s why I am going abroad.”

Miss Morris looked at him sharply to see if he were smiling, but he was, on the contrary, gazing sentimentally at the horizon-line, and puffing meditatively on his pipe.  He was apparently in earnest, and waiting for her to make some comment.

“How very interesting!” was all she could think to say.

“Yes, when you know the details, it is,——­very interesting,” he answered.  “She is the Princess Aline of Hohenwald,” he explained, bowing his head as though he were making the two young ladies known to one another.  “She has several other names, six in all, and her age is twenty-two.  That is all I know about her.  I saw her picture in an illustrated paper just before I sailed, and I made up my mind I would meet her, and here I am.  If she is not in Grasse, I intend to follow her to wherever she may be.”  He waved his pipe at the ocean before him, and recited, with mock seriousness: 

    “`Across the hills and far away,
               Beyond their utmost purple rim,

     And deep into the dying day,
               The happy Princess followed him.’

“Only in this case, you see,” said Carlton, “I am following the happy Princess.”

“No; but seriously, though,” said Miss Morris, “what is it you mean?  Are you going to paint her portrait?”

“I never thought of that,” exclaimed Carlton.  “I don’t know but what your idea is a good one.  Miss Morris, that’s a great idea.”  He shook his head approvingly.  “I did not do wrong to confide in you,” he said.  “It was perhaps taking a liberty; but as you have not considered it as such, I am glad I spoke.”

“But you don’t really mean to tell me,” exclaimed the girl, facing about, and nodding her head at him, “that you are going abroad after a woman whom you have never seen, and because you like a picture of her in a paper?”