"No, please," she said hurriedly, putting out her hand. "Don't come with me. We must say good-bye here."
"But I'm not going to say good-bye," I objected. "It's a word that doesn't exist as far as you and I are concerned." I took her hand in both of mine, regardless of the flaxen-haired lady who was surveying us coldly from behind the counter. "Tell me when I shall see you again," I demanded. "I can't let you go until you do."
She shook her head. "I don't know. Perhaps we shall never meet after this." She pulled her hand away and stood looking up into my face with wide-open, unhappy eyes. "In any case," she said, "whatever happens, will you always remember that I tried to help you?"
As she spoke she turned away, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the restaurant. The next moment she had stepped out through the open door, and disappeared into the stream of people that hurried ceaselessly past.
CHAPTER FIVE
"By Jove!" exclaimed Ross enviously. "You are a lucky ruffian!"
We had halted the car at the top of a gently rising slope, and there, stretched out below us, lay the shining expanse of the Danewell Estuary. For a couple of miles in either direction a winding belt of silver gleamed and sparkled in the bright morning sunshine. On the left it narrowed gradually towards the small tidal haven of Barham Lock, from which point one could just trace the placid course of the river Shell, meandering along idly through the marshes. On the right it opened out by degrees into an ever-broadening channel, until far away in the distance, where a faint haze brooded over everything, it merged itself imperceptibly into the grey waters of the North Sea.
I pointed to a small, irregularly shaped island which lay out in mid-stream, almost exactly ahead of us.
"That," I said, "is Greensea."