“Why do so now?” put in the girl quickly.
He could not see her face, but the note of alarm in her voice was not even disguised.
“Because, day by day, I see more and more clearly that our friend’s love of your sister is a very real thing. I see, too, or think that I see, a response on her part. From a common sense point of view, what else could one expect? Two young people, each eminently agreeable, are thrown together by fate in circumstances of great and continuous personal danger. The artificial intercourse of civilized life is impossible from the outset. They see each other as they really are. Each has to depend on real characteristics, not on shams. Can one imagine a more ideal method of choosing one’s future partner than those in which we have lived during the past month?”
This was what lawyers call a leading question, and Nina shied at it instantly.
“Everything you have said may be true, Alec,” she said, “but you have advanced no reason whatever for disturbing our pleasant relations. Surely all these problems may be allowed to settle themselves when, if ever, we re-enter the everyday world?”
“That is just my difficulty,” continued Maseden doggedly; he was resolved now to have an irritating hindrance to pleasant relations settled once and for all. “Is it fair to Sturgess to let him believe there is no bar to his wooing? Of course, my marriage was a farce, and can be dismissed as such. But what will C. K. think, what will he say, when he hears of it? Won’t our silence—yes, our silence—you cannot shirk a part of the responsibility—be open to misinterpretation? May it not bring about the very catastrophe we want to avoid?”
“I really don’t understand,” said the girl in a frightened way.
“Then I must make my meaning clear, even though it hurts,” he said determinedly. “If I tell Sturgess now about the Cartagena ceremony, though rather late in the day, it is not too late; whereas, if I wait till we reach New York, how astounded and mystified he will be by the legal process which I must set on foot to secure your sister’s freedom and my own! Why, the result might be tragic. If C. K. knows now, he can, if he chooses, seek from Madge an explanation of the whole mad business. She may give or withhold it—that is for her to decide. But at least we shall all be acting squarely and above-board. I put it to you strongly, for the sake of each one of us, that Sturgess should be told the whole truth.”
For a little while there was silence. Nina seemed to be weighing the pros and cons of the matter with much care.
“I think you are right,” she said at last. “I differ from you only in a small but—to a woman—very important particular. Madge, not you, should tell C. K. what happened in Cartagena. It is her privilege. It will come better from her. In the morning, when opportunity offers, she and I will talk things over. I am sure I can persuade her as to the course she should adopt.