"I am sorry, Stella," he whispered, dropping his hand on hers, and she clutched it and let it go.
"Perhaps I shan't suffer so very much," she repeated and the next moment the gangway light shone down upon their faces. Stella dropped her head and furtively dried her cheeks.
"I want to go up last," she said, "and just behind you, so that no one shall see what a little fool I am making of myself."
But by some subtle understanding already it was felt amongst that group of people, quick to perceive troubles of the emotions, that something was amiss between the pair. They were left alone upon the deck. Stella by chance looking southwards to the starlit gloom, Luttrell to the north, where still the daylight played in blue and palest green and the delicate changing fires of the opal.
"What will you do, Stella?" Luttrell asked gently.
"I think I will go and live in the country," she replied.
"It will be lonely, child."
"There will be ghosts, my dear, to keep me company," she answered with a wan smile. "People like me always have to be a good deal alone, anyway. I shall be, of course, lonelier, now that I have no one to play with," and the smile vanished from her lips. She flung up her face towards the skies, letting her grief have its way upon that empty deck.
"So we shall never be together—just you and I—alone again," she said, forcing herself to realise that unintelligible thing. Her thoughts ran back over the year—the year of their alliance—and she saw all of its events flickering vividly before her, as they say drowning people do. "Oh, Wub, what a cruel mistake you made when you went out of your way to be kind," she cried, with the tears streaming down her face; and Luttrell winced.
"Yes, that's true," he admitted remorsefully. "I never dreamed what would come of it."