After a brief preoccupation with literature, both readers lost interest in their books at the same moment, and both, with a bored sigh, allowed them to decline upon their steamer-rug knees, with an artfully synchronised sympathy. Then their eyes met, and two of a kind recognised each other and smiled. Nature had created them fully equipped flirts. They only needed to look at each other to know it; and, straightway, headlong, with the good excuse of marine ennui upon them, they followed the law of their natures--Sid, however, with a strong brake on, a restraint, which, with the comprehension of sorceresses, his companion felt and interpreted, and inwardly resolved to overcome.
“Strange, how everything is a bore at sea! even the most interesting book,” said the siren.
“Have you really the courage to say that you think the sea ridiculously overrated?”
“I love courage,” she answered, looking at him in a laughing, challenging way.
“You necessitate it,” was the answer, according to the eternal formula; and so the sea began to be less of a bore, and continued being less and less so each succeeding day, till the last evening of the voyage had come.
They were nearing the sad shores of the shamrock, and they had escaped from the after-dinner promenade, and had made themselves cosey near the bow of the ship, in some nook of windlass and sailing tackle close to the bulwark, where they could watch the phosphorescent spume of the ship’s course, and speak of it, if necessary.
So far, though not entirely satisfied with himself, Sid had combined faithfulness with flirtation in a blending so adroit that the ache of his conscience was just bearable; and, he told himself, that Rosamund, of all women, would be the last to withhold her admiration from so brilliant a feat of sentimental tight-rope walking. Any student of the _ars amatoria_ knows how fine is the line between faithfulness and unfaithfulness, finer far than a hair from the beloved’s head; and Sid had the right to congratulate himself with his deft-footed adhesion to that moonbeam of a path. The siren was too expert herself in such perilous experiment not to have observed and admired Sid’s achievement, and, naturally, she was piqued by it to a special effort of conquest this last evening. Not, of course, that she really cared for Sid, any more than he cared for her. It was merely two flirts making a trial of strength, the old eternal duel between man and woman; but, for once, the man had most to lose--and that Sid kept reiterating to himself: for this momentary diversion he might lose Rosamund, lose his whole life, and the meaning of it--for this!