And each time she murmured with a rising inflexion: 

“Take this—­and this—­and this—­” till suddenly her arms fell.  She had seen the ensign dipped in response, and next moment the point below hid the hull of the brig from her view.  Then she turned away from the balustrade, and, passing slowly before the door of her father’s room with her eyelids lowered, and an enigmatic expression on her face, she disappeared behind the curtain.

But instead of going along the passage, she remained concealed and very still on the other side to watch what would happen.  For some time the broad, furnished verandah remained empty.  Then the door of old Nelson’s room came open suddenly, and Heemskirk staggered out.  His hair was rumpled, his eyes bloodshot, his unshaven face looked very dark.  He gazed wildly about, saw his cap on a table, snatched it up, and made for the stairs quietly, but with a strange, tottering gait, like the last effort of waning strength.

Shortly after his head had sunk below the level of the floor, Freya came out from behind the curtain, with compressed, scheming lips, and no softness at all in her luminous eyes.  He could not be allowed to sneak off scot free.  Never—­never!  She was excited, she tingled all over, she had tasted blood!  He must be made to understand that she had been aware of having been watched; he must know that he had been seen slinking off shamefully.  But to run to the front rail and shout after him would have been childish, crude--undignified.  And to shout—­what?  What word?  What phrase?  No; it was impossible.  Then how? . . .  She frowned, discovered it, dashed at the piano, which had stood open all night, and made the rosewood monster growl savagery in an irritated bass.  She struck chords as if firing shots after that straddling, broad figure in ample white trousers and a dark uniform jacket with gold shoulder-straps, and then she pursued him with the same thing she had played the evening before—­a modern, fierce piece of love music which had been tried more than once against the thunderstorms of the group.  She accentuated its rhythm with triumphant malice, so absorbed in her purpose that she did not notice the presence of her father, who, wearing an old threadbare ulster of a check pattern over his sleeping suit, had run out from the back verandah to inquire the reason of this untimely performance.  He stared at her.

“What on earth? . . .  Freya!” His voice was nearly drowned by the piano.  “What’s become of the lieutenant?” he shouted.

She looked up at him as if her soul were lost in her music, with unseeing eyes.

“Gone.”

“Wha-a-t? . . .  Where?”