Katrine shook her head, stretching her hand to grope for the first straight edge, but the brown fingers swept them away, and a masterful voice cried:
“No, you don’t! You’ve made your choice, and you’ll stick to it. We’ll see this thing through as we’ve begun,” He studied her with twinkling, curious eyes, taking no pity on her embarrassment. “I’d like to follow that journey! What started your travels? Something I said? What did I say? Blessed if I remember. You take yourself very seriously, don’t you? It’s not a matter of life and death how one works out a jig-saw. Here’s the button! He’s been staring us in the face all the time. Now it’s a fork!”
Katrine was fumbling industriously at another corner of the table.
“I’ve fitted two bits of the red, but I haven’t an idea what it’s about. It seems divided into small squares.”
“A wall perhaps. Bricks.” Bedford examined the pieces with a practised eye. “Yes! evidently bricks. There was a bit somewhere with a rim of blue. That must be the junction with the sky. Let’s work at that.”
Katrine worked for ten minutes on end, resorted in desperation to the old maid’s expedient, and affixed each blue bit in turns to the obstinate red. When each persistently refused to fit, impatience seized her, and an impulse to dash her hands wildly over the board, when suddenly, inexplicably, a piece which had hitherto obstinately refused to fit, repented itself after the manner of jig-saw pieces, and slid meekly into its place, exhibiting thereby an enlightening boundary of brick wall against blue sky. The tingling eagerness to continue that line, to discover whereto it led, was a revelation of the inherent childishness of the human heart. Katrine jumped on her seat, scuffled among the pieces with claw-like fingers, breathed loud and deep, while Bedford looked on, smiling to himself, and flicking likely pieces towards her, so that to her might fall the satisfaction of continuing the chain. Above all things he was anxious to keep her amused, and to prevent her thoughts from turning to the tragic event of the day before. Last evening she had looked pitifully shaken. Mrs Mannering had reported a distressed night; he dreaded each fresh happening of the monotonous life which would link it with the day that had gone.
The first jar came with the partaking of the eleven o’clock deck lunch. Katrine’s face blanched suddenly as she raised it from the table to confront a steward, bearing the glass of milk and soda, and the bars of chocolate which were her own chosen refreshment. A shake of the head dismissed the man, but the mischief had been done. Impossible now not to recall how, twenty-four hours ago, she had beckoned a gaunt figure to her side, and insisted upon sharing with him her feast, goaded by his suffering air to put forth little womanly wiles, which he should be unable to refuse. Involuntarily she turned her head to glance along the deck. It was incredible that he should not be there! The tears rose slowly in her eyes.
“I say, I’ve made a discovery! This motley grey stuff is a mass of lilies! I’ve put three pieces together, and there it is as plain as a pikestaff—a lily complete, and others in the background. They’ll grow against the wall.”
“Do you believe in prayers for the dead?”
Bedford started, met deep, pleading eyes and realised that for the moment the jig-saw must wait.