“Oh!” he said.  “Did you pay it?”

“Yes,” said she.  “The landlady wanted the money, she told me.  So Nellie gave me her share, and I paid it at once.”

“Oh!” said Denry.

There was a silence.  Denry felt as though he were defending a castle, or as though he were in a dark room and somebody was calling him, calling him, and he was pretending not to be there and holding his breath.

“But I’ve hardly enough money left,” said Ruth.  “The fact is, Nellie and I spent such a lot yesterday and the day before....  You’ve no idea how money goes!”

“Haven’t I?” said Denry.  But not to her—­only to his own heart.

To her he said nothing.

“I suppose we shall have to go back home,” she ventured lightly.  “One can’t run into debt here.  They’d claim your luggage.”

“What a pity!” said Denry, sadly.

Just those few words—­and the interesting part of the interview was over!  All that followed counted not in the least.  She had meant to induce him to offer to defray the whole of her expenses in Llandudno—­no doubt in the form of a loan; and she had failed.  She had intended him to repair the disaster caused by her chronic extravagance.  And he had only said:  “What a pity!”

“Yes, it is!” she agreed bravely, and with a finer disdain than ever of petty financial troubles.  “Still, it can’t be helped.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Denry.

There was undoubtedly something fine about Ruth.  In that moment she had it in her to kill Denry with a bodkin.  But she merely smiled.  The situation was terribly strained, past all Denry’s previous conceptions of a strained situation; but she deviated with superlative sang-froid into frothy small talk.  A proud and an unconquerable woman!  After all, what were men for, if not to pay?

“I think I shall go home to-night,” she said, after the excursion into prattle.

“I’m sorry,” said Denry.

He was not coming out of his castle.

At that moment a hand touched his shoulder.  It was the hand of Cregeen, the owner of the old lifeboat.

“Mister,” said Cregeen, too absorbed in his own welfare to notice Ruth.  “It’s now or never!  Five-and-twenty’ll buy the Fleetwing, if ten’s paid down this mornun.”

And Denry replied boldly: 

“You shall have it in an hour.  Where shall you be?”

“I’ll be in John’s cabin, under the pier,” said Cregeen, “where ye found me this mornun.”

“Right,” said Denry.

If Ruth had not been caracoling on her absurdly high horse, she would have had the truth out of Denry in a moment concerning these early morning interviews and mysterious transactions in shipping.  But from that height she could not deign to be curious.  And so she said naught.  Denry had passed the whole morning since breakfast and had uttered no word of pre-prandial encounters with mariners, though he had talked a lot about his article for the Signal and of how he had risen betimes in order to despatch it by the first train.