in your room. So I went there. How did
I get in? I borrowed a pass-key from the purser on the plea that I had
left mine in my room. I hoped you would not miss it until we reached
Hong Kong, and I intended to return it then and explain to you.

"My life," she added deprecatingly, "is in some slight danger, and,
like the small fool that I am--even though I am fully aware that no one
in the whole world cares whether I am living or dead--well, Mr. Moore,
for some reason I still persist in clinging to the small hope."

She smiled wanly and earnestly, so Peter thought. A dozen impulses
militated against his believing a word of this glib explanation; his
common sense told him that he should seek further, that the explanation
was only half made; and yet it cannot be denied that she had gone
unerringly to his greatest weakness, perhaps his worst fault, his
belief in the sincerity of a woman in trouble.

"Why didn't you ask me?" he demanded in his most apologetic voice, as
though he had wronged her beyond repair. "Why didn't you tell me you
were in danger? I'd have loaned you the revolver willingly--willingly!"

"I did try to find you," she replied; "but the wireless room was dark.
You were nowhere on deck."

Peter was aware that for some reason Romola Borria did not prefer to
share the secret of her real or fancied danger with him. He felt a
little dissatisfied, cheated, as though the straightforward answer for
which he had come had been turned into the counterfeit of evasion.

The situation as it now had shaped itself demanded some sort of
decision. Without the whole truth he was reluctant to leave, and it
was imprudent to remain any longer.

Romola, in this constrained pause in their conversation, feeling
perhaps the reason for his silence, lowered her dark lashes and drew up
her feet until they were concealed by the red folds of the kimono, and
she drew the satin more closely about her soft, white throat.

"You have decided nothing, then?" she parried.

"What decision I might have formed," he said, a trifle coolly, "has
been put off by--this. You see, I must admit it, this--this rather
complicates things for me. I'm in the dark altogether now, you see. I
wanted to help you, however I could. And then--then I find this cameo."

She nodded absently, fingering the groove in the automatic's handle.

"I'm afraid I took too much for granted," she said in a low voice.
"Don't you suppose my curiosity was arous