"I had known nothing of Mrs. Ilkington at all," said Miss Searle cautiously, "until we met in Paris last month."
He was conscious of the hint of uneasiness in her manner, but inclined to assign it to the wrong cause.
"I trust I haven't bored you, Miss Searle--talking about myself."
"Oh, no; indeed no. You see--" she laughed--"I quite understand; I keep a temperament of my own--if you should happen to wonder why Mrs. Ilkington interests herself in me. I'm supposed to have a voice and to be in training for grand opera."
And again she laughed. "I'm afraid there isn't any cure for me at this late date," she protested; "I've gone so far I must go farther. But I know what you mean. People who sing _are_ difficult. However ..." She stirred restlessly in her chair, then sat up.
"What is that light over there?" she asked. "Do you know?"
Staff's gaze sought the indicated direction. "Roches Point, I imagine; we're about due at Queenstown ..."
"As late as that?" The girl moved as if to rise. Staff jumped up and offered her a hand. In a moment she was standing beside him. "I must go below," said she. "Good night."
"You won't tell me who it was in Lucille's, yesterday?" he harked back pleadingly.
She shook her head gaily as she turned forward to the main companionway entrance: "No; you must find out for yourself."
"Then--_perhaps_--I shall tell you all--sometime."
He paused by the raised door-sill as she stepped within the superstructure. "Why not stop up and see the tender come off?" he suggested. "It might be interesting."
She flashed him a look of gay malice. "If we're to believe Mrs. Ilkington, you're apt to find it more interesting than I. Good night."
"Oh--good night!" he muttered, disturbed; and turned away to the rail.
His troubled vision ranged far to the slowly shifting shore lights. The big steamship had come very close inshore--as witness the retarded speed with which she crept toward her anchorage--but still the lights, for all their singular brightness, seemed distant, incalculably far away; the gulf of blackness that set them apart exaggerated all distances tenfold. The cluster of sparks flanked by green and red that marked the hovering tender appeared to float at an infinite remove, invisibly buoyed upon the bosom of a fathomless void of night.