The Indiarubber Man eyed her sorrowfully. "I turn my back for a moment to watch sailors drink beer--I am a man of few recreations--and return to find you sighing over the memory of another and making shocking bad puns. Really, Miss Betty--Ah! _Now_ I can understand...."
A small and pink-faced Midshipman approached with two brimming glasses of champagne. The Indiarubber Man faded discreetly away, leaving his charge and her new-found knight pledging each other with sparkling eyes.
The Bride touched her husband's sleeve in a lull in the handshaking and congratulations. "Isn't it rather nice to see people enjoying themselves! Don't you feel as if you wanted everybody to be as happy as we?--_Look_ at Betty and that boy.... Champagne, if you please! How ill the child will be; and she's got to go back to school to-morrow...."
Her husband laughed softly. "Pretty little witch.... Torps has taken it away from her and given her some lemonade instead. Where's Mother?--Oh, I see: hobnobbing with the Colonel over a cup of tea. What a crush! Dear, can't we escape soon....?"
"Very soon now--poor boy, are you very hot in those things?"
"Not very. The worst part's coming--the rice and slippers and good-byes. Are you very tired, darling...?"
"Good-bye--Good-bye! Good-bye, Daddie.... Yes, yes.... I will.... Good-bye, Betty darling.... Good-bye----"
"Good-bye, Mother mine.... Torps, you've been a brick..... So-long! Good-bye! ... Not down my neck, Betty! ... Yes, I've got the tickets---- Good-bye, Good-bye!----"
The lights of Dover were twinkling far astern. Two people, a man and a woman, walked to the stern of the steamer and stood close together, leaning over the rail.
"What a lot of Good-byes we've said to-day," murmured the woman, watching the pin-points of light that vanished and reappeared. She fell silent, as if following a train of thought, "And after all, we're only going to Paris!"
"We're going further than that----" The man took possession of her slim, ungloved hands, and the star-powdered heavens alone were witness to the act. "All the way to El Dorado, darling!"
She gave him back the pressure of his fingers, and presently sighed a little, happily, as a child sighs in its sleep. "And we haven't any return tickets...."