arranged in coils, with a simplicity and a precision which to a more experienced observer would have indicated the possession of a maid of no ordinary qualities.  Her mouth became more and more delightful every time he studied it; her voice, even her method of speech, were entirely natural and with a peculiarly fascinating inflexion.  At times she looked and spoke with the light-hearted gaiety of a child; then again there was the grave and cultured woman apparent in her well-balanced and thoughtful criticisms.  When, at the end of the meal, she rose to leave the table, he found himself surprised at her height and the slim perfection of her figure.  His first remark, when he joined her upon the stairs, was an almost abrupt expression of his thoughts.

“Tell me,” he exclaimed, “why were all my first impressions of you wrong?  To-night you are a revelation to me.  You are amazingly different.”

She laughed at him.

“I really can’t do more than show you myself as I am,” she expostulated.

“Ah! but you are so many women,” he murmured.

“Of course, if you are going to flatter me!  Give me a cigarette from my case, please, and strike a match, and if you don’t mind struggling with this wind and the darkness, we will have our walk.  There!” she added, as they stood in the companionway.  “Now don’t you feel as though we were facing an adventure?  We shan’t be able to see a yard ahead of us, and the wind is singing.”

They passed through up the companionway.  She took his arm and he suddenly felt the touch of her warm fingers feeling for his other hand.  He gripped them tightly, and his last impression of her face, before they plunged into the darkness, was of a queer softness, as though she were giving herself up to some unexpected but welcome emotion.  Her eyes were half closed.  She had the air of one wrapped in silence.  So they walked almost the whole length of the deck.  Philip, indeed, had no impulse or desire for speech.  All his aching nerves were soothed into repose.  The last remnants of his ghostly fears had been swept away.  They were on the windward side of the ship, untenanted save now and then by the shadowy forms of other promenaders.  The whole experience, even the regular throbbing of the engines, the swish of the sea, the rising and falling of a lantern bound to the top of a fishing smack by which they were passing, the distant chant of the changing watch, all the night sights and sounds of the seaborne hostel, were unfamiliar and exhilarating.  And inside his hand, even though given him of her great pity, a woman’s fingers lay in his.

She spoke at last a little abruptly.

“There is something I must know about,” she said.

“You have only to ask,” he assured her.

“Don’t be afraid,” she continued.  “I wish to ask you nothing which might give you pain, but I must know—­you see, I am really such a ordinary woman—­I must know about some one whom you went to visit that day, didn’t you, at Detton Magna?”