"You and I, Miss Fletcher," he said slowly, "can never be friends; at least, not in the sense I am thinking of, for our paths lie wide apart. If my assumption is wrong—and you have sense and discrimination enough to know what I mean by that—you must pardon me and put it down to lack of insight on my part, not to any presumption or vanity. If it is not wrong, you will understand without my saying more, why it is necessary that you should leave this ship for good at Singapore."
The girl was looking at him with large, startled eyes. What, she wondered, was that unnamable something about him which she had never observed before? Why was it that, of a sudden, he seemed to have assumed the guise of another class—a class about which she had read, but with which she had never come into contact? The bold, fearless sea-captain, the man of infinite resource, unscrupulous and even brutal, had disappeared. In his place was a quiet, self-contained gentleman, speaking in a low, kind voice; chiding her while he apologised for doing it.
In some subtle way he had made her feel pitifully small and ignorant; he awed her; but in a way she had never been awed before. It was impossible to resent this, because she did not know how to do so; it was something outside her experience. For the first time in her life she felt herself up against that indefinable power which for centuries has made the masses of the world subject to the few. It was something more than the power to command, it was the power to be obeyed.
There was a long pause, and then the girl, too proud to deny her love for him, spoke.
"You have not misunderstood me," she said, with a frankness that lent dignity to her confession. "Without knowing it I have come to love you. I think I would willingly and gladly have followed you to the uttermost ends of the earth; I would have suffered with and for you. I believed that I was meant for such as you; but you have made me see how foolish I have been. Don't think that I am ashamed you should know this. I'm not."
She stopped, her eyes fixed on his defiantly as though daring him to misunderstand her. In any other man but Calamity her words would have produced a deep impression, but he, to all appearances, was perfectly unmoved.
"We will forget all this," he said quietly. "The thing still to be settled is this matter of what's to become of you when we reach Singapore."