The girl put a hand on his arm. “When the call has come? When my days are numbered, Ivo?” she said.
He almost burst out in an oath.
“I’d rather, if I were you, be recognized and called by my own name and nature,” he said bitterly. “But it’s all nonsense, Netta. Do, for God’s sake, believe it!”
He was so obviously overwrought, the situation was so painful, that his friend persuaded him, on personal grounds, to leave. They punted across, dropped down a distance, and brought up under the bank in a quiet spot.
“Very well,” said Cantle. “You’ll tell me, perhaps, what’s the matter?”
“Can’t you see? She’s dying.”
He dropped his face into his hands, with a groan of impotent suffering.
“There’s some mystery here,” said his friend quietly.
Monk looked up, and burst out in a sudden lost fury—
“There is, by God! Jack the Skipper!”