“Are you going on to the mountains? Where? Perhaps we may meet again?” And once more the possibilities were all astir.
“Philip, I think we had better not,” she answered, with her eyes full upon his. “It would not be fair to—you.”
“Oh, I can keep myself in hand all right,” he replied, with a hard laugh from which he could not altogether eliminate the suspicion of a tremor. “Don’t be afraid. I’ve learnt a thing or two since we last had the pleasure of meeting.”
The steamer was under way again, skimming merrily over the sapphire surface. The chit-chat and laughter of the other passengers rose gleefully upon the air, and in the saloon the pop of corks, the clink of knives and forks. There is solitude in a crowd—stillness in noise.
“Where are you going to now, Philip?” she said.
“Oh, I don’t quite know! I’ve booked to Territet. Perhaps I’ll walk up and put in a few days at the old shop—perhaps I’ll go on to Saas or the Bel Alp and do some climbing. Can’t tell till I get there.”
She made no answer. This was not the easy, light-hearted talk of the old times. There was a bitter, reckless ring about it that was unmistakable. The speaker literally did not care where he went or what he did. Still she did not leave him.
“I wonder if it has ever occurred to you all this time Alma,” he went on in a softer tone, “that it was here—on board this very ship—we first met? Not exactly that perhaps, but first saw each other, which amounts to the same thing.”
“Yes, it has.”
“It has? Well, it seems a strange chance, a strange stroke of Fate, that we should meet here again—here of all places. How long ago was it? Ten years—twenty?”