“What’s the latest about your father?” he asked, with a touch of impatient, aggrieved disdain.  Both were aware that the words had opened a crucial interview between them.  She moved nervously on the seat.  The benches that ran along the deck-rails met in an acute angle at the stem of the steamer, so that the pair sat opposite each other with their knees almost touching.  He went on:  “I hear he hasn’t gone back to the office yet.”

“No,” said Marguerite.  “But he’ll start again on Monday, I think.”

“But is he fit to go back?  I thought he looked awful.”

She flushed slightly—­at the indirect reference to the episode in the basement on the night of the death.

“It will do him good to go back,” said Marguerite.  “I’m sure he misses the office dreadfully.”

George gazed at her person.  Under the thin glove he suddenly detected the form of her ring.  She was wearing it again, then. (He could not remember whether she had worn it at their last meeting, in Agg’s studio.  The very curious fact was that at their last meeting he had forgotten to look for the ring.) Not only was she wearing the ring, but she carried a stylish little handbag which he had given her.  When he bought that bag, in the Burlington Arcade, it had been a bag like any other bag.  But now it had become part of her, individualized by her personality, a mysterious and provocative bag.  Everything she wore, down to her boots and even her bootlaces so neatly threaded and knotted, was mysterious and provocative.  He examined her face.  It was marvellously beautiful; it was ordinary; it was marvellously beautiful.  He knew her to the depths; he did not know her at all; she was a chance acquaintance; she was a complete stranger.

“How are you getting on with him?  You know you really ought to tell me.”

“Oh, George!” she said, earnestly vivacious.  “You’re wrong in thinking he’s not nice to me.  He is He’s quite forgiven me.”

“Forgiven you!” George took her up.  “I should like to know what he had to forgive.”

“Well,” she murmured timorously.  “You understand what I mean.”

He drummed his elegant feet on the striated deck.  Out of the corner of his left eye he saw the mediaeval shape of the Tower rapidly disappearing.  In front were the variegated funnels and masts of fleets gathered together in St. Katherine’s Dock and London Dock.  The steamer gained speed as she headed from Cherry Gardens Pier towards the middle of the river.  She was a frail trifle compared with the big boats that lined the wharves; but in herself she had size and irresistible force, travelling quite smoothly over the short, riotous, sparkling waves which her cut-water divided and spurned away on either side.  Only a tremor faintly vibrated throughout her being.

“Has he forgiven you for being engaged?” George demanded, with rough sarcasm.

She showed no resentment of his tone, but replied gently: