ashed pub, with plate-glass fronts, a
display of brass rails, and divided into many compartments each having
its own entrance.

But of course all this was silly. The marriage, the love, the affairs of
Captain Anthony were none of my business. I was on the point of moving
down the street for good when my attention was attracted by a girl
approaching the hotel entrance from the west. She was dressed very
modestly in black. It was the white straw hat of a good form and trimmed
with a bunch of pale roses which had caught my eye. The whole figure
seemed familiar. Of course! Flora de Barral. She was making for the
hotel, she was going in. And Fyne was with Captain Anthony! To meet him
could not be pleasant for her. I wished to save her from the
awkwardness, and as I hesitated what to do she looked up and our eyes
happened to meet just as she was turning off the pavement into the hotel
doorway. Instinctively I extended my arm. It was enough to make her
stop. I suppose she had some faint notion that she had seen me before
somewhere. She walked slowly forward, prudent and attentive, watching my
faint smile.

"Excuse me," I said directly she had approached me near enough. "Perhaps
you would like to know that Mr. Fyne is upstairs with Captain Anthony at
this moment."

She uttered a faint "Ah! Mr. Fyne!" I could read in her eyes that she
had recognized me now. Her serious expression extinguished the imbecile
grin of which I was conscious. I raised my hat. She responded with a
slow inclination of the head while her luminous, mistrustful, maiden's
glance seemed to whisper, "What is this one doing here?"

"I came up to town with Fyne this morning," I said in a businesslike
tone. "I have to see a friend in East India Dock. Fyne and I parted
this moment at the door here . . . " The girl regarded me with
darkening eyes . . . "Mrs. Fyne did not come with her husband," I went
on, then hesitated before that white face so still in the pearly shadow
thrown down by the hat-brim. "But she sent him," I murmured by way of
warning.

Her eyelids fluttered slowly over the fixed stare. I imagine she was not
much disconcerted by this development. "I live a long way from here,"
she whispered.

I said perfunctorily, "Do you?" And we remained gazing at each other.
The uniform paleness of her complexion was not that of an anaemic girl.
It had a transparent vitality and at that particular moment the faintest
possible ro