“In one way—yes.”
She made a little face. “That’s not good enough. But I’ll let you off. I’ll forget what you said, on condition that you make no more objection to my going where I please. Is it a bargain?”
“I suppose so—for my objections have no effect anyway.”
“Not a bit. They only spoil everything. Don’t you understand,” she went on, earnestly, “that I had to do this? If I had stayed at home, or wherever I tried to make a home, I would have died; I would have gone mad with loneliness and trouble. You don’t know what I have suffered. Perhaps you think I am forgetting it, but it follows me night and day. I daren’t think of it, or speak of it. I have to do something—anything. Don’t you understand?”
“Perhaps not altogether. But you shall go where you like, without let or hindrance,” said Elliott, gravely.
“We’re friends again, then?”
“I think so.”
“Ah, but you must be sure,” she insisted.
“Well, then, I am sure,” he said, laughingly; though in his heart he felt no such certainty. But he saw clearly that friendship would have to do till the treasure-hunt were finished. On that expedition they were comrades and fellow adventurers, and nothing more.
During the remainder of the passage he therefore endeavoured to return as far as possible to the easy spirit of the Hongkong days, though Hongkong was a place of which neither cared to speak. Margaret appeared to welcome this regained camaraderie, and her spirits seemed to grow brighter than at her landing in America. They talked of many things, but they avoided the subject of the treasure-ship; that was dangerous to touch; it was too near their hearts. Yet in the intervals of silence there was an image upon Elliott’s inward eye, an image that came to be almost permanent, of another steamer, this one ploughing through the heated blue of the Indian Ocean, and of two men leaning over her bow, with their faces and thoughts running forward to the same spot as his own. The same sort of vision must have presented itself to Margaret, for she once, though only once, exclaimed: