He turned then and looked at her, looked full and straight into her small, sallow face, with its shadowy eyes and pointed features, as if he would register her likeness upon his memory.

She gave him a faint, friendly smile.

“I’m going below now,” she said.  “Good-bye!”

He raised his hat abruptly.  His head was massive as a bull’s.

“Mind how you go!” he said briefly.

And Sybil went, feeling like a child that has been rebuked.

II

“Do you always walk along with your eyes shut?” asked Brett Mercer.

Sybil gave a great start, and saw him lounging immediately in her path.  The days that had elapsed since their first meeting had placed them upon a more or less intimate footing.  He had assumed the right to speak to her from the outset—­this giant who had picked her up like an infant and scolded her for crying.

It was a hot morning in the Indian Ocean.  She had not slept during the night, and she was feeling weary and oppressed.  But, with a woman’s instinctive reserve, she forced a hasty smile.  She would not have stopped to speak had he not risen and barred her progress.

“Sit here!” he said.

She looked up at him with refusal on her lips; but he forestalled her by laying an immense hand on her shoulder and pressing her down into the chair he had just vacated.  This accomplished, he turned and hung over the rail in silence.  It seemed to be the man’s habit at all times to do rather than to speak.

Sybil sat passive, feeling rather helpless, dumbly watching the great lounging figure, and wondered how she should escape without hurting his feelings.

Suddenly, without turning his head, he spoke to her.

“I suppose if I ask what’s the matter you’ll tell me to go to the devil.”

The remark, though characteristic, was totally unexpected.  Sybil stared at him for a moment.  Then, as once before, his rude address set her sense of humour a-quivering.  Depressed, miserable though she was, she began to laugh.

He turned, and looked at her sideways.

“No doubt I am very funny,” he observed dryly.

She checked herself with an effort.

“Oh, I know I’m horrid to laugh.  But it’s not that I am ungrateful.  There is nothing really the matter.  I—­I’m feeling rather like a stray cat this morning, that’s all.”

The smile still lingered about her lips as she said it.  Somehow, telling this taciturn individual of her trouble deprived it of much of its bitterness.

Mercer displayed no sympathy.  He did not even continue to look at her.  But she did not feel that his impassivity arose from lack of interest.

Suddenly: 

“Is it true that you are going to be married as soon as you land?” he asked.

Sybil was sitting forward with her chin in her hands.

“Quite true,” she said; adding, half to herself, “so far as I know.”