“This is not the only one that he has prepared, then?” Lessingham enquired.
She shook her head.
“I believe it is the fifth,” she replied. “They all disappear when they are finished, but I have no idea where to. To me they seem to represent a shocking waste of time.”
Lessingham was suddenly taciturn. He held out his hand. “You are dining with us to-morrow night, remember,” she said.
“I am not likely to forget,” he assured her.
“And don't get drowned,” she concluded. “I don't know any of these fishermen—I hate them all—but I'm told that Oates is the worst.”
“I think that we shall be quite all right,” he assured her. “Thanks very much for finding me the charts. What I have seen will help me.”
Helen came in for a moment and their farewell was more or less perfunctory. Lessingham was almost thankful to escape. There was an unusual flush in his cheeks, a sense of bitter humiliation in his heart. All the fervour with which he had started on his perilous quest had faded away. No sense of duty or patriotism could revive his drooping spirits. He felt himself suddenly an unclean and dishonoured being.