‘Now if I had said that——’ said I.
‘Oh,’ she answered, with the little colour that had come into her cheeks fading out of them, ‘I will never reproach you for telling the truth.’
After breakfast I went to Wilfrid’s cabin and found him up and dressed, sitting in an easy chair reading his diary, which I took the book to be. He held the volume close to his face; his legs were crossed, his feet in slippers, his right hand grasped his big meerschaum pipe which was filled with yellow tobacco not yet lighted. The cabin window was open and the draperies of the handsome little apartment stirred to the pouring of the rich, hot ocean breeze through the orifice.
‘You look vastly comfortable, Wilf,’ said I. ‘Glad to find you well. But it must be a bit dull here though?’
‘Not at all,’ said he, putting down the book and lighting his pipe. ‘Sit and smoke with me.’
‘Why not on deck?’ I answered, sitting, nevertheless. ‘A wide view in hot weather takes the place of a cool atmosphere. The sight is sensible of the heat as well as other organs. It may be cooler down here in reality than it is under the awning above, but these cribbed and coffined bulkheads make it very hot to the eye, spite of that pleasant gushing of wind there.’
He quietly sucked at his pipe, looking at me through the wreathes of tobacco smoke which went up from his bowl. I lighted a cigar, furtively observing his face as I did so. He was pale: there was nothing novel in that, but I noticed an expression of anxiety in his eyes that was new to me: a look of sane concern as though some difficulty novel and surprising, yet not of a character to strike deep, had befallen him. I glanced at the breakfast tray that was upon the table near which he was seated and easily guessed by what remained that he had made a good meal. His manner was quiet, even subdued; no symptoms of the old jerkiness, of the odd probing gestures of head with a thrust of his mind, as it were, into one’s face as if his intellect were as short-sighted as his eyes. He was airily clothed in white, a coloured shirt wide open at the collar, and a small silk cap of a jockey pattern was perched upon his head.
‘Has Finn removed the five-guinea piece from the mainmast? said he?’
‘I don’t know, Wilf.’