"Well, well!" I said to myself. "Well, well!" I said again, with my head between my hands as I sat on my lonely bunk. There seemed nothing else to say.
I stayed for a long time, until the press had broken, and we were going on at full speed once more. Then I went to a window of the kitchen, which Phyllis so much admired, and looked out. I could see the deck of "Mascotte," and Brederode and Nell, who were still alone there together.
"Well, well!" I repeated idiotically; "it's I who did that. If it hadn't been for me—but I don't know. I suppose it was bound to happen, anyway. I wonder?"
Then I returned to my cabin and flitted about restlessly. Soon I became conscious that I was humming an air. It was not, in itself, a sad air; but there was a certain sadness as well as appropriateness in its meaning for me——
Giving agreeable girls away—
One for you, and one for you, but never (how does it go?),
never one for me!
We were stopping. We had come to Middelburg. I looked out again. Nell was on deck alone. Doubtless Alb had at last gone below to the motor-room, and was exchanging the blue overalls for something more decorous. Would he, even for the sake of conventionality, have left her at such a moment unless everything were settled?
"Mascotte" and "Waterspin" were at rest, and I could avail myself of Alb's absence to find out if I liked. I was not at all sure that I did like. Nevertheless, something urged me to go, and before I quite knew how or why I had come there, I stood beside the pretty white figure. Nell looked up at me, radiant with emotion.
"Oh, Mr. Starr, you were just the one I wanted to see," she exclaimed. "I was willing you to come."
"Well, I came," I said, smiling. "I'm glad you want me."
"I want to ask you what to do. I sent him away. You know, we must stop on board till Lady MacNairne's better, so—there's no hurry, and—he had to change. At first he wouldn't go without an answer. But I told him I must have ten minutes to make up my mind. He's explained everything. He was never to blame. It was all Freule Menela's fault—and mine. Please say what you think. You know him so well; you're old friends. There's no one else I can talk to, and—I feel somehow—I have for a long time—almost as if you were a kind of—adopted brother."