your cabin!"

They crept down the deck like a pair of thieves, hardly breathing till
they were behind the locked door. Without looking at her, April saw
that there was trouble to meet. She remembered the faces of the other
women, and the instinct to protect a fellow-creature against the mob
rose in her.

"Tell me what it is. I'll help you fight it out."

But Diana had flung herself down with a defiant air on the sofa.

"Don't you know? Weren't you one of the hounds on my track?" she
demanded, in a high-pitched whisper. April looked at her steadily.

"The whole thing is an absolute mystery to me. I know nothing except
that first you were missing, and then apparently they found you----"

"Yes; in Geoffrey Bellew's cabin!"

The April fool had, indeed, surpassed herself! April blenched, but she
took the blow standing. After all, she had been as great a fool as the
girl sitting there, for she, too, had handed over her good name into
the careless hands of another; had sold her reputation for a song--a
song that had lasted seventeen days, but seemed now in the act of
becoming a dirge.

"Do you mind telling me what happened, so that I know exactly where we
stand and what there is to be done."

Diana laughed.

"There is nothing to be done."

April forgave her the laugh, because it was not composed of merriment
nor any elements of joyousness.

"I went to Geoffrey's cabin because we had things to talk over, and it
seemed the only place where we could get away from prying eyes.
Somehow I stayed on and on, not realizing it was so late . . . and
then, and then . . ." She began to stammer; defiance left her . . .
"then, that awful knocking . . . those faces staring in! . . . all
those brutes of women!" She covered her eyes with her hands and broke
down utterly. "My God! I am done for!"

April thought so, too. It seemed to her they were both done for, but
there was not much help in saying so. Diana's confession horrified
her, and she saw that her own future at the Cape was knocked as flat as
a house of cards that is demolished by the wayward hand of a child.
Yet at that moment her principal feeling was one of compassion for the
girl on the sofa, who alternately laughed and covered her eyes, and now
with a pitiful attempt at bravado was attempting to light a cigarette,
with hands that shook like aspen leaves.

"I suppose it was that cat Stanislaw who started the search for me?"

"It appears that she got