I stared.
“I’m afraid,” I said blankly, “that I don’t quite—”
“Some one may suspect. Some one may come,” urged this most astonishing young woman. “Don’t you see that—that I’m trusting you to help me? Won’t you stay?”
Wondering if I by any chance looked as stunned as I felt, I bowed formally, faced about, and waited, both arms on the rail. My ideas as to my companion had been revolutionized in sixty seconds. I had believed her a girl with whom I might have grown up, a girl whose brother and cousins I had probably known at college, a girl that I might have met at a friend’s dinner or at the opera or on a country-club porch if I had had my luck with me. Now what was I to think her—an escaped lunatic or something more accountable and therefore worse? If I detest anything, it is the unconventional, the stagy, the mysterious. Setting my teeth, I resolved to wait until she concluded her researches; after that, politely but firmly, I would depart.
And then, beside me, the paper rustled. I heard a little gasp, a tiny low-drawn sigh. Stealing a glance down, I saw the girl’s face shining whitely in the deck light. Her black lashes fringed her cheeks as her head bent backward; her eyes were as dark as the water we were slipping through. I had no idea of speaking, and yet I did speak.
“I am afraid,” I heard myself saying, “that you have had bad news.”
She was struggling for self-control, but her voice wavered.
“Yes,” she agreed; “I am afraid I have.”
“If there is anything I can do—” I was correct, but reluctant. How I would bless her if she would go away!
But obviously she did not intend to. Quite the contrary!