He laughed. "If the wardrooms ever find that out, I'm done for." The glory of her! All his life he had been dreaming of an hour like this.
A pause followed. His utter lack of inquisitiveness intrigued her beyond expression. Not a word about how he had found her. Not a word about the Adventure. Why? What kind of a man was he, that he could sit opposite her without deluging her with questions? And he had a right to know many things. She had given him one opening without meaning to—the query relative to the automatic in his pocket. Why hadn't he taken advantage of it?
She broke the silence and led him into the war; but after a few phrases he veered away from this. He spoke of the snow, how he longed for the north country of late, how he had grown weary for the need of cold, lashing winds and the smell of snow.
When she could stand it no longer she said, "Tell me by what magic you found me!"
"I'm a queer codger. I have a strange memory for sounds. Possibly because I've lived much in the open. My leaves were generally spent in the jungles. Foliage moving—I can tell almost instantly whether it is the wind or animal life. The same with the crackling of a twig. Sometimes the recurrence of a sound confuses me. There may be some difficulty in placing it. But I know I have heard the sound before."
Then he produced the photograph. She stared at it bewilderedly. Sound? What was he talking about?
"You found me by that? But you did not hear that!"
"Still, it recalled a sound."
Her glance fell on the photograph again. She had forgotten the posing for it. This was not the sort of dénouement she wanted; he had found her quite ordinarily. Yet she could not make him out. This was not the man she had known on the Nippon Maru, the boy who had been like crystal or an open book. This was an inscrutable stranger, of velvet and steel.
"I begin to understand," she said. She felt the mantle of weariness falling again on her shoulders. The hide-and-seek of the encounter irked her. Why didn't he speak, demand questions, satisfy her curiosity? She was very tired. He would never know how much awake she had been on that journey. She had walked the car corridors at all hours; she had watched for Berta to pass the crack in the door until the concentration had made her dizzy. She was tired, and she hadn't the power to resist her own curiosity. She flung open Bluebeard's door recklessly. "I begin to understand."