Suddenly she said, without turning toward him: “You’ve had no letters since you’ve been on board.”
He looked at her, surprised. “No—thank the Lord!” he laughed.
“And you haven’t written one either,” she continued in her hard statistical tone.
“No,” he again agreed, with the same laugh.
“That means that you really are free—”
“Free?”
He saw the cheek nearest him redden. “Really off on a holiday, I mean; not tied down.” After a pause he rejoined: “No, I’m not particularly tied down.”
“And your book?”
“Oh, my book—” He stopped and considered. He had thrust The Pageant of Alexander into his handbag on the night of his Bight from Venice; but since then he had never looked at it. Too many memories and illusions were pressed between its pages; and he knew just at what page he had felt Ellie Vanderlyn bending over him from behind, caught a whiff of her scent, and heard her breathless “I had to thank you!”
“My book’s hung up,” he said impatiently, annoyed with Miss Hicks’s lack of tact. There was a girl who never put out feelers....