"Meanwhile, _au revoir_! If you want anything, touch the
button at your right hand, just as you would on board the _St. Louis_."
"I thank your lordship," said Mrs. Van Stuyler, half melting and half
icy still. "I shall be quite content to wait until you come back. Really
I feel quite sleepy."
"That's the effect of the elevation on the dear old lady's nerves,"
Redgrave whispered to Zaidie as he helped her up the narrow stairway
which led to the glass-domed conning-tower, in which in days to come she
was destined to pass some of the most delightful and the most terrible
moments of her life.
"Then why doesn't it affect me that way?" said Zaidie, as she took her
place in the little chamber, steel-walled and glass-roofed, and half
filled with instruments of which she, Vassar girl and all as she was,
could only guess the use.
"Well, to begin with, you are younger, which is an absolutely
unnecessary observation; and in the second place, perhaps you were
thinking about something else."
"By which I suppose you mean your lordship's noble self."
This was said in such a tone and with such an indescribable smile that
there immediately ensued a gap in the conversation, and a silence which
was a great deal more eloquent than any words could have made it.
When Miss Zaidie had got free again she put her hands up to her hair,
and while she was patting it into something like shape again she said:
"But I thought you brought me here to show me some experiments, and not
to----"
"Not to take advantage of the first real opportunity of tasting some of
the dearest delights that mortal man ever stole from earth or sea? Do
you remember that day when we were coming down from the big
glacier--when your foot slipped and I just caught you and saved a
sprained ankle?"
"Yes, you wretch, and went away next day and left something like a
broken heart behind you! Why didn't you--Oh what idiots you men can be
when you put your minds to it!"
"It wasn't quite that, Zaidie.
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