ed me to something suggestive of sympathy and service. It was
difficult indeed to strike the right note--some things seemed too wide of
the mark and others too importunate. At last, unexpectedly, she appeared
to give me my chance. Irrelevantly, abruptly she broke out: "Didn't you
tell me you knew Mr. Porterfield?"

"Dear me, yes--I used to see him. I've often wanted to speak to you of
him."

She turned her face on me and in the deepened evening I imagined her more
pale. "What good would that do?"

"Why it would be a pleasure," I replied rather foolishly.

"Do you mean for you?"

"Well, yes--call it that," I smiled.

"Did you know him so well?"

My smile became a laugh and I lost a little my confidence. "You're not
easy to make speeches to."

"I hate speeches!" The words came from her lips with a force that
surprised me; they were loud and hard. But before I had time to wonder
she went on a little differently. "Shall you know him when you see him?"

"Perfectly, I think." Her manner was so strange that I had to notice it
in some way, and I judged the best way was jocularly; so I added: "Shan't
you?"

"Oh perhaps you'll point him out!" And she walked quickly away. As I
looked after her there came to me a perverse, rather a provoking
consciousness of having during the previous days, and especially in
speaking to Jasper Nettlepoint, interfered with her situation in some
degree to her loss. There was an odd pang for me in seeing her move
about alone; I felt somehow responsible for it and asked myself why I
couldn't have kept my hands off. I had seen Jasper in the smoking-room
more than once that day, as I passed it, and half an hour before this had
observed, through the open door, that he was there. He had been with her
so much that without him she now struck one as bereaved and forsaken.
This was really better, no doubt, but superficially it moved--and I admit
with the last inconsequence--one's pity. Mrs. Peck would doubtless have
assured me that their separation was gammon: they didn't show together on
deck and in the saloon, but they made it up elsewhere. The secret places
on shipboard are not numerous; Mrs. Peck's "elsewhere" would have been
vague, and I know not what licence her imagination took. It was distinct
that Jasper had fallen off, but of course what had passed between them on
this score wasn't so and could never be. Later on, through his mother, I
had _his_ version of that, but I m