His eye caught Nellie’s.  She had not moved.

He felt then as he had never felt in his life.  No, absolutely never.  Her sad, her tragic glance rendered him so uncomfortable, and yet so deliciously uncomfortable, that the symptoms startled him.  He wondered what would happen to his legs.  He was not sure that he had legs.

However, he demonstrated the existence of his legs by running up to Nellie.  Ruth was by this time swallowed in the crowd on the landing-stage.  He looked at Nellie.  Nellie looked at him.  Her lips twitched.

“What am I doing here?” he asked of his soul.

She was not at all well dressed.  She was indeed shabby—­in a steerage style.  Her hat was awry; her gloves miserable.  No girlish pride in her distraught face.  No determination to overcome Fate.  No consciousness of ability to meet a bad situation.  Just those sad eyes and those twitching lips.

“Look here,” Denry whispered, “you must come ashore for a second.  I’ve something I want to give you, and I’ve left it in the cab.”

“But there’s no time.  The bell’s...”

“Bosh!” he exclaimed gruffly, extinguishing her timid, childish voice.  “You won’t go for at least a quarter of an hour.  All that’s only a dodge to get people off in plenty of time.  Come on, I tell you.”

And in a sort of hysteria he seized her thin, long hand and dragged her along the deck to another gangway, down whose steep slope they stumbled together.  The crowd of sightseers and handkerchief-wavers jostled them.  They could see nothing but heads and shoulders, and the great side of the ship rising above.  Denry turned her back on the ship.

“This way.”  He still held her hand.

He struggled to the cab-rank.

“Which one is it?” she asked.

“Any one.  Never mind which.  Jump in.”  And to the first driver whose eye met his, he said:  “Lime Street Station.”

The gangways were being drawn away.  A hoarse boom filled the air, and then a cheer.

“But I shall miss the boat,” the dazed girl protested.

“Jump in.”

He pushed her in.

“But I shall miss the...”

“I know you will,” he replied, as if angrily.  “Do you suppose I was going to let you go by that steamer?  Not much.”

“But mother and father...”

“I’ll telegraph.  They’ll get it on landing.”

“And where’s Ruth?”

“Be hanged to Ruth!” he shouted furiously.

As the cab rattled over the cobbles the Titubic slipped away from the landing-stage.  The irretrievable had happened.

Nellie burst into tears.

“Look here,” Denry said savagely.  “If you don’t dry up, I shall have to cry myself.”

“What are you going to do with me?” she whimpered.

“Well, what do you think?  I’m going to marry you, of course.”

His aggrieved tone might have been supposed to imply that people had tried to thwart him, but that he had no intention of being thwarted, nor of asking permissions, nor of conducting himself as anything but a fierce tyrant.