“Jimme-e-e-e!” It was Helena’s voice, and nearer along the rail. “Here’s the fudges—now where can the little nuisance have gone! Jim!”
“Here I am, Auntie,” replied the little nuisance, as she now approached the door of our cabin; and he brushed past me and started not aft but toward the bows. “An’ there you are!” he shouted over his shoulder in cryptic speech, whether to me or to his Auntie Helen I could not say.
She stood now in such position near my door that neither of us could avoid the other without open rudeness. I looked at her gravely and she at me, her eyes wide, her lips silent for a time. Silently also, I swung the cabin door wide and stood back for her to pass.
“You have sent for me?” she said at last, still standing as she was. A faint smile—part in humor, part in timidity, part, it seemed suddenly to me, wistful; and all just a trifle pathetic—stirred her lips.
“‘I sent my soul through the Invisible,’” said I; and stepped within and quite aside for her to pass.
“Jimmy told the biggest lie in all his career,” said I. She would have sprung back.
“—And the greatest truth ever told in all the world. Come in, Helena Emory. Come into my quiet home. Already, as you know, you have come into my heart.”
“I am not used to going into a gentleman’s—quarters,” said she: but her foot was on the shallow stair.
“It is common to three gentlemen of the ship’s company, Helena Emory,” said I, “and we have no better place to receive our friends.”
She now was in the room. I closed the door, and sprung the catch.