st remark, when he joined her upon the stairs, was an almost
abrupt expression of his thoughts.

"Tell me," he exclaimed, "why were all my first impressions of you wrong?
To-night you are a revelation to me. You are amazingly different."

She laughed at him.

"I really can't do more than show you myself as I am," she expostulated.

"Ah! but you are so many women," he murmured.

"Of course, if you are going to flatter me! Give me a cigarette from my
case, please, and strike a match, and if you don't mind struggling with
this wind and the darkness, we will have our walk. There!" she added, as
they stood in the companionway. "Now don't you feel as though we were
facing an adventure? We shan't be able to see a yard ahead of us, and the
wind is singing."

They passed through up the companionway. She took his arm and he suddenly
felt the touch of her warm fingers feeling for his other hand. He gripped
them tightly, and his last impression of her face, before they plunged
into the darkness, was of a queer softness, as though she were giving
herself up to some unexpected but welcome emotion. Her eyes were half
closed. She had the air of one wrapped in silence. So they walked almost
the whole length of the deck. Philip, indeed, had no impulse or desire
for speech. All his aching nerves were soothed into repose. The last
remnants of his ghostly fears had been swept away. They were on the
windward side of the ship, untenanted save now and then by the shadowy
forms of other promenaders. The whole experience, even the regular
throbbing of the engines, the swish of the sea, the rising and falling of
a lantern bound to the top of a fishing smack by which they were passing,
the distant chant of the changing watch, all the night sights and sounds
of the seaborne hostel, were unfamiliar and exhilarating. And inside his
hand, even though given him of her great pity, a woman's fingers lay in
his.

She spoke at last a little abruptly.

"There is something I must know about," she said.

"You have only to ask," he assured her.

"Don't be afraid," she continued. "I wish to ask you nothing which might
give you pain, but I must know--you see, I am really such a ordinary
woman--I must know about some one whom you went to visit that day, didn't
you, at Detton Magna?"

He answered her almost eagerly.

"I want to talk about Beatrice," he declared. "I want to tell you
everything about her. I know that you will understand. We were brough