"DIANA."
It took a long time for April's stricken mind to absorb the meaning of it all. Over and over she read the blurred tear-blistered sentences, sometimes weeping, sometimes painfully muttering them aloud to herself. When she had finished at last, her course was set, her mind made up. She knew the letter by heart, and sitting up in bed, white as a ghost, she slowly destroyed it into minutest atoms, putting them into a little purse that lay in the rack beside her. Then she rang the bell. To the stewardess who came she said calmly, but with pallid lips:
"If Miss Poole is in her cabin, ask her to come to me."
Then she whipped out of bed, flung on a wrapper, and arranged her hair.
When the woman returned, she knew the answer before it was spoken.
"Miss Poole is not in her cabin. Her bed has not been slept in."
"Ask the Captain to come here."
In a few moments it was all over. The Captain had come and gone again, with the first page of Diana's letter in his hand. The procedure after that was much the same as it had been two nights before, except that the Captain went alone on his search, and the result, with the evidence he held in his hand, was a foregone conclusion from the first. All inquiry terminated in the same answer. No one had set eyes on "Miss Poole" since the previous evening. The last person to speak with her was the stewardess, who, on finding she did not intend going to dinner, had offered to bring her some, but had been refused. The rest was conjecture—a riddle that only the sea, lying as blue and flat and still as the sea in a gaudy oleograph, could answer. The story had flown round the ship like wildfire, and hardly a soul but felt as if he or she had taken part in a murder. Women reproached each other and themselves, and men went sombre-eyed to the smoke-room and ordered drinks that left them still dry-mouthed. The blue and golden day with the perfumes of Africa spicing its breath took on a brazen and arid look. It was as if old Mother Africa had already reached out her brazen hand and dealt a blow, just to remind everyone on the boat that she was there waiting for them, perhaps with a tragedy for each in her Pandora box. The Captain had not let it be known where and with whom Diana's last note had been found. With the remembrance of April's ashen face as she had handed it to him, he wished to spare the girl as much as possible.
As for her, the one clear thought in her mind was that she must obey Diana's last behest and keep silence. It was not hard to do that, for she had no words. Throughout the day, in a kind of mental torpor, she helped the stewardess sort and pack all the costly clothes and possessions which were really Diana's, putting them into the trunks already labelled for a hotel in Cape Town; her own things were locked and sealed up in the abandoned cabin on the lower deck, and she would probably never see them again. She did not attempt to speak to Bellew, though she knew that an interview with him awaited her, for there could be no mistake about his being that other person referred to in Diana's letter. Neither did she see Vereker Sarle. He sent a note during the afternoon, a very sweet and friendly note, hoping that she was not ill, and begging her not to be too upset by the tragedy. And between the lines she read as he meant her to do.
"Why are you hiding from me? Come on deck. I want you."
She wanted him, too. She longed for the comfort of his presence, but did not dare meet him. A greater barrier than ever existed between them. The dead girl stood there with her finger on her lips. The truth could not now be told to Sarle, until, at any rate, it was known to that unhappy old man in England whose head must be bowed in sorrow to the grave. After that, who could tell?