Crowding out of the shallow breast pocket of his Norfolk where he lay were papers. _Her_ papers!
The next instant, lithely, softly, soundlessly on her unshod feet, she had slipped from the lounge and crossed the stateroom to his side, and her fingers already touched the edges of the packet.
Her papers! And her hand rested on them. But she did not take them. There was something about the stealth of the act that checked her,--something that seemed foreign, repugnant to her nature.
Breathless, her narrow hand poised, she hesitated, trying to remember that the papers were hers--striving to aid herself with the hot and shameful memory of the violence he had offered her.
Why couldn't she take them? This man and she were now at war! War has two phases, violence and strategy. Both are legitimate; he had played his part, and this part was strategy. Why shouldn't she play that part? Why?
But her hand wavered, fell away, and she looked down into his sleeping face and knew that she could not do it.
After a moment his eyes opened and met hers, pleasantly.
He said: "Why didn't you take them, Karen?"
"You couldn't understand if I told you," she said with youthful bitterness.
He looked very grave at that. She turned, picked up shoes and spats, and seated herself on the sofa.
So he got up, opened the door and went up on deck, leaving her the stateroom to herself.
At the office of the wireless station the operator seemed to have no objection to sending a message for him to the British Consul in Amsterdam, and obligingly looked up the address. So Guild sent his message and prepaid reply.
Then he went into the smoking-room and lit a cigarette.
He was dozing when a steward awoke him with a reply to his wireless message:
Kervyn Guild On board S. S. _Feyenoord_ Will call at American Consulate. Many thanks. CHURCHILL, Consul.
He sat thinking for a few minutes. Then remembering that he did not know where the American Consul was to be found, he went again to the wireless office and procured the address.
Turning, as he was leaving, to thank the boyish operator, he found that youth's shrewd eyes fixed on him intently.
"Look out, sir," said the operator, in perfectly good English. "There's a lot o' talk about you on board."