When the last seal broke she gave a little cry, turned and covered her eyes with both hands.
As for Guild, he stood with a sheet of paper in his hands, staring at the tracery which covered it and which meant absolutely nothing to him. Then he looked at the remaining sheets of paper. None had any significance to him. There were three sheets of thin translucent paper. These sheets were numbered from one to three.
The first seemed to be a hasty study from some artist's sketch book. It appeared to be a roughly executed and hasty sketch of several rather oddly shaped trees—a mere note jotted down to record the impression of the moment—trees, a foreland, a flight of little hedge birds.
On it, in English, the artist had written "Sunset." Indeed, the declining and somewhat archaic sun on the horizon and the obviously evening flight of the birds seemed to render the label unnecessary.
For a long while Guild stood studying it in the light of the stateroom ceiling lamp. And what continually arrested his attention and perplexed him was the unusual shapes of the trees and the un-birdlike flight of the birds. Also artists don't sketch on such paper.
Now and then he looked across at Karen with an inscrutable expression, and each time he looked at her his face seemed to grow more rigid and his set jaws more inflexible.
The girl crouched in the corner of the lounge, her face covered by both hands and pressed against the pillows.
He did not speak to her. Presently he turned to the next paper. It bore the rough sketch of a fish, and was numbered 2.
