I bowed. "I shall be delighted," I announced banally, "to
do as you say."
Her face flushed to a warm wild-rose tint as she heard me promise it,
and her red lips, parting, took on a tremulous smile.
"Thank you," she murmured in frank gratitude. "I thought--I knew you
would help me!" Then she was gone.
My trance broken I woke to hear myself softly swearing. I consigned
myself to my proper home, an asylum; I wished the girl at Timbuktu,
Kamchatka, Land's End--anywhere except on this ship. As I had told the
agent of the Phillipson Rifles, I am no boy. One can scarcely knock
about the world for thirty years without gaining some of its wisdom; and
of all the appropriate truisms I spared myself not one.
Resentfully I reminded myself that mysteries were suspicious, that
honest people seldom had need of secrecy, that idiots who, like me,
consented to act blindfold would probably repent their blindness
in sackcloth and ashes before long. But what use were these sage
reflections? I had given my word to her. I was in for the consequences,
however unpleasant they proved.
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