“Well, if you can’t, you can’t,” she said. “And now I’m going to see you back to your cabin, and you are going to bed. You’ve had a dreadful evening, dear, over these nightmare errors. I am so sorry. And if you feel I am in the room with you again, you mustn’t be frightened or think there is anything wrong. I can’t help being with you.”
He said nothing to this, and they went down the creaking white passage to his cabin in silence.
“And you’ve had dinner?” she asked. “You won’t be hungry before morning? It’s only a little after one, you know. I could get you something.”
“No; nothing, thanks,” he said.
He stood irresolute in the middle of his cabin, and Maud watched him with shining eyes, knowing and telling herself that she knew that her desire was going to be given her. Then he took a bunch of keys from his pocket, detached one, and flung it on the ground.
“That’s the key,” he said. “You will find the bottle in my despatch-box. You may take it if you like.”
But Maud made no movement to pick up the key.
“My dear Thurso,” she said, “where are your manners? That really is not the proper way to give me a key.”
“I won’t give it you in any other way,” he said.
She longed so to pick it up herself that she could scarcely restrain herself from doing it, but she longed also that, strengthened by this first effort, he should make another, give her the key voluntarily. But what if he picked it up himself, and refused to give it her? No; that could not happen.