tell
their typewriter," she remarked. "You seem as though you mean it, though.
Where did you meet Elizabeth Dalstan?"

"I came over with her on the _Elletania_," he answered thoughtlessly.

She gave a little start. Then she turned upon him almost in anger.

"Well, of all the simpletons!" she exclaimed. "So that's the way you give
yourself away, is it? Just here from Jamaica, eh! Nothing to do with
Douglas Romilly! Never heard of the _Elletania_, did you! I'd like to see
you on the grid at police headquarters for five minutes, with one of our
men asking you a few friendly questions! You'd look well, you would! You
ought to go about with a nurse!"

Philip had all the appearance of a guilty child.

"You see," he explained penitently, "I am new to this sort of thing.
However, you know now."

"Still ready to swear that you're not Douglas Romilly, I suppose?"

"On my honour I am not," he replied.

"Kind of funny that you should have been on the steamer, after all," she
jeered.

"Perhaps so, but I am not Douglas Romilly," he persisted.

She was silent for a moment, then she shrugged her shoulders.

"What do I care who your are?" she said. "Here, help me off with this
raincoat, please. It's warm in here, thank goodness!"

He looked at her as she sat by his side in her plain black dress, and was
impressed for the first time with a certain unsuspected grace of outline,
which made him for the moment oblivious of the shabbiness of her gown.

"You have rather a nice figure," he told her with a sudden impulse of
ingenuousness.

She turned upon him almost furiously. Something in his expression,
however, seemed to disarm her. She closed her lips again.

"You are nothing but a child!" she declared. "You don't mean anything.
I'd be a fool to be angry with you."

The waiter brought their steak. Philip was conscious of something in his
companion's eyes which almost horrified him. It was just that gleam of
hungry desire which has starvation for its background.

"Don't let's talk," he pleaded. "There isn't any conversation in the
world as good as this."

The waiter served them and withdrew, casting a curious glance behind.
They were, from his point of view, a strange couple, for, cosmopolitan
though the restaurant was, money was plentiful in the neighbourhood, and
clients as shabby as these two seldom presented themselves. He pointed
them out to a maitre d'hotel, who in his turn whispered a few words
concerning them to