“Sorry? Why should you be sorry?” he said softly. “I tell you that I love you with all——”
“Ah, do not say it again—for pity’s sake do not say it again,” she cried, almost piteously. “You must never speak to me of love; I have promised to love only Jack—Mr Norgate.”
“What—you have promised?—you have——”
“It only happened after tiffin to-day. I thought perhaps he might have told you—I thought perhaps you noticed that he and I—oh yes, you certainly behaved as if you took it for granted that... ah, I am so sorry that you misunderstood.... I think that I must have loved him from the first.”
There was another long pause. He looked down into the gleaming water that rushed along the side of the ship. Then she laid one of her hands on his, saying—
“Believe me, Mr Somers, I am sorry—oh, so sorry!”
He took her hand tenderly, looking into her face as he said—
“My dear child, you have no reason to be sorry: I know Jack Norgate well, and I know that a better fellow does not live: you will be happy with him, I am sure. And as for me—well, I suppose I was a bit of a fool to think that you——”
“Do not say that,” she cried. “I am not worthy of you—I am not worthy of him. Oh, who am I that I should break up such a friendship as yours and his? I begin to wish that I had never come aboard this steamer.”
“Do not flatter yourself that you have come between us, my dear,” he said, with a little laugh. “Oh no; ‘shall I, wasting with despair?’—well, I think not. Men don’t waste with despair except on the lyric stage. My dear girl, he has won you fairly, and I congratulate him; and you—yes, I congratulate you. He is a white man, as they say on the Great Pacific slope. Listen to that banjo! Confound it! I wonder shall I ever be able to listen to the banjo again.... Shall we join the revellers in the saloon?”