"Why should Miss Brown have the slightest wish that I should go to Africa?"
"If ye do not know, how could ye expect me to? Still, it should be plain to ye that it was not for your health."
Austin raised himself a trifle, and looked at his comrade steadily. "The drift of your remarks is tolerably clear. Any way, because I would sooner you made no more of them, it might be as well to point out that no girl who cared twopence about a man would send him to the swamps where the Cumbria is lying."
"Maybe she would not. There are things I do not know, but ye will mind that Jacinta Brown is not made on quite the same model as Miss Gascoyne. She sees a good deal, and if she was not content with her husband she would up and alter him. I'm thinking it would not matter if it hurt the pair o' them."
"The difficulty is that she hasn't got one."
Macallister laughed softly. "It's one that can be got over, though Jacinta's particular. It's not everybody who would suit her. Ye are still wondering why ye went to Africa?"
"No," said Austin, with a trace of grimness. "I don't think it's worth while. Mind, I'm not admitting that I didn't go because the notion pleased me, and if Miss Brown wished me to, it was certainly because of Muriel Gascoyne."
"Maybe," said Macallister, with a little incredulous smile. He rose, and, moving towards the doorway, turned again. "She might tell ye herself to-morrow. She's now in Santa Cruz."
He went out, apparently chuckling over something, and Austin thoughtfully smoked out his cigar. To be a friend of Jacinta Brown's was, as he had realised already, a somewhat serious thing. It implied that one must adopt her point of view, and, what was more difficult, to some extent, at least, sink his own individuality. Macallister and Jefferson were, he fancied, perhaps right upon one point, and that was that Jacinta had decided that a little strenuous action might be beneficial in his case; but if this was so, Austin was not sure that he was grateful to her. He was willing to do anything that would afford her pleasure, that was, so long as he could feel she would gain anything tangible, if it was only the satisfaction of seeing Muriel Gascoyne made happy through his endeavours. In fact, what he wished was to do her a definite service, but the notion of being reformed, as it were, against his wishes, when he was not sure that he needed it, did not please him. This was carrying a friendly interest considerably too far, and it was quite certain, he thought, that he could expect nothing more from her. He almost wished that he had never seen her, which was a desire he had hovered on the brink of before; but while he considered the matter the trade-breeze was sighing through the port, and the engines throbbed on drowsily, while from outside came the hiss and gurgle of parted seas. Austin heard it all, until the sounds grew fainter, and he went to sleep.
It also happened that while he slept and dreamed of her, Jacinta sat with Muriel Gascoyne in the garden of a certain hotel on the hillside above Santa Cruz, Teneriffe. The house had been built long ago, evidently for a Spanish gentleman of means and taste, and its latest proprietor had sufficient sense to attempt no improvement on its old-world beauty. It stood on a terrace of the hillside, quiet, quaint, and cool, with its ancient, bronze-railed balconies, red-tiled roof, and pink-washed walls, but its garden of palms and oleanders was its greatest charm.