"Look out, Rob may yet!"
"Preposterous! Don't you remember when you said you lived in Aberdeen and Rob in Argyll, and I innocently asked whether they were not near together? How indignant Rob was! And then I crossly retorted that they both began with 'a', anyway, and—" she paused for breath, and Stewart laughingly took up the story and finished it.
"And how Rob scornfully answered that so did 'cat' and 'crow'! He's never deigned to tell me which applied to which!"
"That was Rob all over!"
Late that night the quartermaster at his lonely wheel, watched a tall man pacing the decks.
After awhile the figure paused at the ship's railing and leaned against it heavily, looking out over the moonlit sea. The deep throbbing of the mighty engines came up to him and beat and beat against his senses.
"Twice," said the Briton, slowly, speaking to the stillness of the stars and the restlessness of the ocean, "Twice, as a boy, I kissed her, when we fought death together. Some day, in an hour of danger, I shall kiss her again."
II.
Cary was singing. Trevelyan heard her before he had reached the second flight of stairs in the lodgings. The clear contralto voice sifted down into the dark passage as sunlight sifts into a ravine. It rose; swelled higher and filled the entrance way. Trevelyan's pulses kept time to its swinging measure as he came on up the stairs, and quietly opened the door of the little sitting room. The measure died away. Cary finished the running accompaniment and rose from the piano.
"Bravo!" cried Trevelyan from the doorway.