Whatever the number was of the second-class stateroom on the Citric, it was rather too far down in the belly of that leviathan to have suited fashionable people. But Oliver and Nancy had stopped being fashionable some time before and they told each other that it was much nicer than first-class on one of the small liners with apparent conviction and never got tired of rejoicing at their luck in its being an outside. It was true that the port-hole might most of the time have been wholly ornamental for all the good it did them, for it was generally splashed with grey October sea, but, at least, as Nancy lucently explained, you could see things—once there had actually been a porpoise—and that neither of them, in their present condition, would have worried very much about it if their cabin had been an aquarium was a fact beyond dispute.

“Time to get up, dear!” This is Oliver a little sternly from the upper berth. “That was your bath that came in a minute ago and said something in Cockney. At least I think it was—mine's voice is a good deal more like one of Peter's butlers—” “But, Ollie, I'm so comfortable!”

“So am I. But think of breakfast.”

“Well—breakfast is a point.” Then she chuckles, “Oh, Ollie, wouldn't it have been awful if we'd either of us been bad sailors!”

“We couldn't have been,” says Oliver placidly. “We have too much luck.”

“I know but—that awful woman with the face like a green pea—oh, Ollie, you'd have hated me—we are lucky, darling.”

Oliver has thought seriously enough about getting up to be dangling his legs over the edge of his shelf by now.

“Aren't we?” he says soberly. “I mean I am.”

“I am. And everybody's being so nice about giving us checks we can use instead of a lot of silly things we wouldn't know what to do with.” She smiles. “Those are your feet,” she announces gravely.

“Yes. Well?”

“Oh, nothing. Only I'm going to tickle them.”

“You're not? Ouch—Nancy, you little devil!” and Oliver slides hastily to the floor. Then he goes over to the port-hole.

“A very nice day!” he announces in the face of a bull's eye view of dull skies and oily dripping sea.

“Is it? How kind of it! Ollie, I must get up.” “Nancy, you must.” He goes over and kneels awkwardly by the side of her berth—an absurd figure enough no doubt in tortoise-shell spectacles and striped pajamas, but Nancy doesn't think so. As for him he simply knows he never will get used to having her with him this way all the time; he takes his breath delicately whenever he thinks of it, as if, if he weren't very careful always about being quiet she might disappear any instant like a fairy back into a book.

He kisses her.

“Good morning, Nancy.”

Her arms go round him.

“Good morning, dearest.”

“It isn't that I don't want to get up, really,” she explains presently. “It's only that I like lying here and thinking about all the things that are going to happen.”

“We are lucky, you know. Lordy bless the American Express.”

“And my job.” She smiles and he winces.

“Oh, Ollie, dear.”

“I was so damn silly,” says Oliver muffledly.

“Both of us. But now it doesn't matter. And we're both of us going to work and be very efficient at it—only now we'll have time and together and Paris to do all the things we really wanted to do. You are going to be a great novelist, Oliver, you know—”

“Well, you're going to be the foremost etcher—or etcheress—since Whistler—there. But, oh, Nancy, I don't care if I write great novels—or any novels—or anything else—just now.”

She mocks him pleasantly. “Why, Ollie, Ollie, Your Art?”

“Oh, damn my art—I mean—well, I don't quite mean that. But this is life.”

“Just as large and twice as natural,” says Nancy quoting, but for once Oliver is too interested with living to be literary.

“Life,” he says, with an odd shakiness, an odd triumph, “Life,” and his arms go round her shoulders.

THE END