I hope you will forgive me,
though I shall never forgive myself. Oh, my dear, my dear, why did we
ever meet? And what am I to say? I--well, I have promised to marry
another man."
"Disgraceful!" said Philip.
Though Iris's faltered confession might fairly be regarded as
astounding, Philip was unmoved. The German captain had given him a
cigar, and he was examining it with a suspicion that was pardonable
after the first few whiffs.
"Philip dear, this is quite serious," said Iris, momentarily
withdrawing her wistful gaze from the far-away line where sapphire sea
and amber sky met in harmony. Northeastern Brazil is a favored clime.
Bad weather is there a mere link, as it were, between unbroken weeks of
brilliant sunshine, when nature lolls in the warmth and stirs herself
only at night under the moon and the stars. That dingy trader, the
_Unser Fritz_, ostensibly carrying wool and guano from the Argentine to
Hamburg, was now swinging west at less than half speed over the long
rollers which alone bore testimony to the recent gale. Already a deep
tint of crimson haze over the western horizon was eloquent, in nature's
speech, of land ahead. At her present pace, the _Unser Fritz_ would
enter the harbor at Pernambuco on the following morning.
Iris, her troubled face resting on her hands, her elbows propped on the
rails of the poop on the port side, looked at Philip with an intense
sadness that was seemingly lost on him.
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