Heavens, how much I wished to say to her, and how little I dared. I waited, wondering if she would understand. She did not answer, but I saw her hands clasp and unclasp in her lap.
“What you have said of marriage is natural to your traditions. Some other man might do as you suggest and find happiness. I know—I know I could not, and keep my self-respect. I shall never marry, Mademoiselle, unless my whole heart goes with it.” I hesitated and, despite myself, knowing the danger of it, I added, very low, “I know that now.”
She did not hesitate but answered me, instantly and lightly.
“Perhaps, Monsieur, the future will settle that. Will you permit me to hope that it may be so?”
She rose, with a formal nod and made a pretext to descend to her cabin. I saw her to the door and returned, my brain in a whirl. At one moment she had seemed to come to me with such impulsiveness; at the next, to be a thousand miles away. I dropped back into my chair, uneasy and tortured by regrets. A flash of gold on the gray scarf she had left behind her caught my eye and, leaning over, I picked up a little brooch I had always seen at her throat. It was in the form of a locket, heart-shaped, such as children wear. I turned it over in my hands and saw an inscription on the back, a date and a name written in a free hand:
BERNOLINE
The next moment I realized that unwittingly I had trespassed on the mystery of her identity. I put the pin hastily in my pocket and rose, with an idea to restore it to her immediately. I went into the Ladies’ Cabin, hoping to find her there, and then into the writing room. I could not take it, myself, to her stateroom and I did not wish to entrust it to a steward. In the end, I kept it and waited for her reappearance.
XII
It was well into the heart of the afternoon when I discovered her, at her old post on the upper deck.
“Mademoiselle, please do not think that I mean to intrude,” I said diffidently, when I had come to her side.