sy tinge, the merest suspicion of colour; an equivalent, I
suppose, in any other girl to blushing like a peony while she told me
that Captain Anthony had arranged to show her the ship that morning.

It was easy to understand that she did not want to meet Fyne. And when I
mentioned in a discreet murmur that he had come because of her letter she
glanced at the hotel door quickly, and moved off a few steps to a
position where she could watch the entrance without being seen. I
followed her. At the junction of the two thoroughfares she stopped in
the thin traffic of the broad pavement and turned to me with an air of
challenge. "And so you know."

I told her that I had not seen the letter. I had only heard of it. She
was a little impatient. "I mean all about me."

Yes. I knew all about her. The distress of Mr. and Mrs. Fyne--especially
of Mrs. Fyne--was so great that they would have shared it with anybody
almost--not belonging to their circle of friends. I happened to be at
hand--that was all.

"You understand that I am not their friend. I am only a holiday
acquaintance."

"She was not very much upset?" queried Flora de Barral, meaning, of
course, Mrs. Fyne. And I admitted that she was less so than her
husband--and even less than myself. Mrs. Fyne was a very self-possessed
person which nothing could startle out of her extreme theoretical
position. She did not seem startled when Fyne and I proposed going to
the quarry.

"You put that notion into their heads," the girl said.

I advanced that the notion was in their heads already. But it was much
more vividly in my head since I had seen her up there with my own eyes,
tempting Providence.

She was looking at me with extreme attention, and murmured:

"Is that what you called it to them? Tempting . . . "

"No. I told them that you were making up your mind and I came along just
then. I told them that you were saved by me. My shout checked you . . .
" She moved her head gently from right to left in negation . . . "No?
Well, have it your own way."

I thought to myself: She has found another issue. She wants to forget
now. And no wonder. She wants to persuade herself that she had never
known such an ugly and poignant minute in her life. "After all," I
conceded aloud, "things are not always what they seem."

Her little head with its deep blue eyes, eyes of tenderness and anger
under the black arch of fine eyebrows was very still. The mouth looked