“Another opportunity lost,” I thought, as I walked up the path.
“It’s the Malay girl, Selima, I’ll be bound. That’s the mystery, Mr. Fitch. Didn’t he tell you she was a great beauty, all done up in rings and jewels?”
“Yes,” I answered absently.
This conversation took place about a week after my drive with the captain, while Mrs. Simmons was removing the breakfast dishes. I was reading the paper in the next room and did not like to be interrupted.
“I never heard him tell that story,” she continued, raising her voice above the clatter of the dishes. “He has taken you into his confidence, Mr. Fitch.”
“Then I fear I have more woefully betrayed it,” I replied without looking up.
Later I took a walk to the post office. The thought of the mystery, although I would have hesitated to acknowledge it even to myself, was making me positively uncomfortable.
“Was she really the Malay girl, after all?” I pictured the captain, young and handsome, walking up to the altar of a Buddhist temple with a Malay princess, dazzling with rings and jewels, leaning on his arm, her pale skin—no, the Malays were brown. I cursed my superior knowledge. Perhaps their princesses were not so dark. But my vision had faded; I was gazing at the floor of the Gull Harbor post office.