Coxeter wondered if she was really serious. Sometimes he suspected that
Mrs. Archdale was making fun of him--but that surely was impossible.

II

When at last they reached Boulogne and went on board the packet,
Coxeter's ill-humour vanished. It was cold, raw, and foggy, and most of
their fellow-passengers at once hurried below, but Mrs. Archdale decided
to stay on the upper deck. This pleased her companion; now at last he
would have her to himself.

In his precise and formal way he went to a good deal of trouble to make
Nan comfortable; and she, so accustomed to take thought for others,
stood aside and watched him find a sheltered corner, secure with some
difficulty a deck chair, and then defend it with grim determination
against two or three people who tried to lay hands upon it.

At last he beckoned to her to sit down. "Where's your rug?" he asked.
She answered meekly, "I haven't brought one."

He put his own rug,--large, light, warm, the best money could buy--round
her knees; and in the pleasure it gave him to wait on her thus he did
not utter aloud the reproof which had been on his lips. But she saw him
shake his head over a more unaccountable omission--on the journey she
had somehow lost her gloves. He took his own off, and with a touch of
masterfulness made her put them on, himself fastening the big bone
buttons over each of her small, childish wrists; but his manner while he
did all these things--he would have scorned himself had it been
otherwise--was impersonal, businesslike.

There are men whose every gesture in connection with a woman becomes an
instinctive caress. Such men, as every woman learns in time, are not
good "stayers," but they make the time go by very quickly--sometimes.

With Coxeter every minute lasted sixty seconds. But Nan Archdale found
herself looking at him with unwonted kindliness. At last she said, a
little tremulously, and with a wondering tone in her voice, "You're very
kind to me, Mr. Coxeter." Those who spend their lives in speeding others
on their way are generally allowed to trudge along alone; so at least
this woman had found it to be. Coxeter made no answer to her
words--perhaps he did not hear them.

Even in the few minutes which had elapsed since they came on board, the
fog had deepened. The shadowy figures moving about the deck only took
substance when they stepped into the circle of brightness cast by a
swinging globe of light which hung just above Nan Archdale's h