To a more sophisticated mind the utterance might have meant much or little. For my part I look for my clue to the riddle in a later remark Miss Mayne made aloud to the darkness, from off a crumpled tear-wet pillow.

"He never said he loved me," she pleaded. The darkness held no answer.

PART TWO

THE NARRATIVE OF COMMANDER WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
HORNBY, ROYAL NAVY

1

The ship was doing her annual refit at a Dockyard Port in the south, and the Captain and I shared what leave there was going; in my case it amounted to eight days, and I spent them trout fishing in Breconshire. I have tried a good many experiments in the way of how to make the most of a week's leave, and I have come to the conclusion that few things take the taste of war out of a man's mouth as effectively as whipping a "mountainy" trout stream.

It was a long and tedious railway journey back; I suppose I am as fond of my ship as most Commanders: she probably means more to me than a ship does to a man with a wife and bairn of his own, but I can't say I looked forward to slipping into harness again after the week's freedom from routine and responsibility, and the contemplation of returning to another nine months' exile in the North Sea didn't add any gaiety to the train journey. I was uncommonly glad, therefore, when I changed at Bristol and walked into Frank Milsom on the platform.

He was a "Red" Marine and an old shipmate of mine in the Mediterranean Flagship 'way back in the dark ages: one of those born leaders of men, possessing (although I believe it doesn't always follow) a curiously magnetic fascination for women. Yet I believe women bored him; I remember he once told me he would as soon kiss a dog as a woman, unless he was drunk. He was full of "parlour-tricks," too—the things that make a man sought after as a messmate; he could vamp a comic song and do sleight of hand conjuring tricks, and he had the most infectious laugh that ever kept a mouldy wardroom alive. The only vice I ever observed in him was a passion for gambling, but he had a peculiarity which is unusual in the Navy: we used to say he was "fey." He had queer dreams sometimes that used to come true—the date for paying off and things like that—and on one occasion I recollect drawing back the curtain of his cabin on my way down from the middle watch, because I heard him laughing and wondered who was with him at that hour. He was sitting up in his bunk with the moonlight pouring through the open scuttle, and his hand stretched out in gesticulation (a way he had when animated); otherwise the cabin was empty. He was wide awake, told me he was talking to his mother, and cursed me for interrupting. She was at the time about 2,800 miles away as the crow flies.

He came towards me wheeling a ramshackle motor-bicycle, with a cocker spaniel on a chain, and a porter following with his bags and golf clubs. "Bill Hornby!" he said, and the years between us and our last meeting seemed to close up like a telescope. We climbed into an empty carriage and settled down in two corners facing each other, lugging out our pipes and 'baccy pouches preparatory to a long yarn when, just as the train was starting, there was a bit of a commotion outside. A porter jerked open the door, pitched a woman's dressing-case on to the seat (we were sitting at the end furthest from the door), and fumbled for his tip as the owner of the dressing-case followed. She was a long-legged, graceful girl, dressed in tweeds and rather neatly shod. Milsom swore softly under his breath when the dressing-case appeared and stopped filling his pipe. But presently, when the train had started and our fellow-passenger had settled down in the corner facing the engine next to the door and opened a novel, Milsom leaned forward in his seat and asked her permission to smoke.