He paused, and they took the whole one long turn along the wind-swept, shadowy deck in silence.

“Presently she came,” he continued.  “The change was there, too.  She was dressed simply enough, but even I, in my inexperience, knew the difference.  She came in—­she, who had spoken of suicide a short time ago—­singing softly to herself.  She saw me, our eyes met, and the story was told.  I knew, and she knew that I knew.”

It seemed as though something in his tone might have grated upon her.  Gently, but with a certain firmness, she drew her hand away from his.

“You were very angry, I suppose?” she murmured.

Some instinct told him exactly what was passing in her thoughts.  In a moment he was on the defensive.

“I think,” he said, “that if it had been any other man—­but listen.  The photograph which I took from the mantelpiece and threw into the fire was the photograph of my own cousin.  His father and my father were brought up together.  My father chose the Church, his founded the factory in which most of the people in Detton Magna were employed.  When my grandfather died, it was found that he was penniless.  The whole of his money had gone towards founding the Douglas Romilly Shoe Company.  I won’t weary with the details.  The business prospered, but we remained in poverty.  When my mother died I was left with nothing.  My uncle made promises and never kept them.  He, too, died.  My cousin and I quarrelled.  He and his father both held that the money advanced by my grandfather had been a gift and not a loan.  They offered me a pittance.  Well, I refused anything.  I spoke plain words, and that was an end of it.  And then I came back and I saw his picture, my cousin’s picture, upon the mantelpiece.  I can see it now and it looks hateful to me.  All the old fires burned up in me.  I remembered my father’s death—­a pauper he was.  I remembered how near I had been to starvation.  I remembered the years I had spent in a garret whilst Douglas had idled time away at Oxford, had left there to trifle with the business his father had founded, had his West End club, hunters, and shooting.  It was a vicious, mad, jealous hatred, perhaps, but I claim that it was human.  I went out of that little house and it seemed to me that there was a new lust in my heart, a new, craving desire.  If I had thrown myself into that canal, they might well have called it temporary insanity.  I didn’t, but I was mad all the same.  Anything else I did—­was temporary insanity!”

Her hand suddenly came back again and she leaned towards him through the darkness.

“You poor child,” she whispered.  “Stop there, please.  Don’t be afraid to think you’ve told me this.  You see, I am of the world, and I know that we are all only human.  Now, twice up and down the deck, and not a word.  Then I shall ask you something.”

So they passed on, side by side, the touch of her fingers keeping this new courage alive in his heart, his head uplifted even to the stars towards which their rolling mast pointed.  It was wonderful, this—­to tell the truth, to open the door of his heart!