“Perhaps,” she said, with a touch of wistfulness, “when you see my fiance you will change your mind.”

He turned from her with obvious impatience.

“Perhaps you will change yours,” he said.

And with that surly rejoinder of his the conversation ended.  The next moment he moved abruptly away, leaving her in possession.

III

It was early morning when they came at last into port.  When Sybil appeared on deck she found it crowded with excited men, and the hubbub was deafening.  A multitude of small boats buzzed to and fro on the tumbling waters below them, and she expected every instant to see one swamped as the great ship floated majestically through the throng.

She had anticipated a crowd of people on the wharf to witness their arrival, but the knot of men gathered there scarcely numbered a score.  She scanned them eagerly, but it took only a very few seconds to convince her that Robin Wentworth was not among them.  And there had been no letter from him at Colombo.

“They don’t allow many people on the wharf,” said Mercer’s voice behind her.  “There will be more on the other side of the Customs house.”

She looked up at him, bravely smiling, though her heart was throbbing almost to suffocation and she could not speak a word.

He passed on into the crowd and she lost sight of him.

There followed a delay of nearly half-an-hour, during which she stood where she was in the glaring sunshine, dumbly watching.  The town, with its many buildings, its roar of traffic; the harbour, with its ships and its hooting sirens; the hot sky, the water that shone like molten brass; all were stamped upon her aching brain with nightmare distinctness.  She felt as one caught in some pitiless machine that would crush her to atoms before she could escape.

The gangways were fixed at last, and there was a general movement.  She went with the crowd, Mercer’s last words still running through her brain with a reiteration that made them almost meaningless.  On the other side of the Customs house!  Of course, of course she would find Robin there, waiting for her!

She said it to herself over and over as she stepped ashore, and she began to picture their meeting.  And then, suddenly, an awful doubt assailed her.  She could not recall his features.  His image would not rise before her.  The memory of his face had passed completely from her mind.  It had never done so before, and she was scared.  But she strove to reassure herself with the thought that she must surely recognize him the moment her eyes beheld him.  It was but a passing weakness this, born of her agitation.  Of course, she would know him, and he would know her, too, mightily though she felt she had changed during those three years that they had not met.

She moved on as one in a dream, still with that nightmare of oppression at her heart.  The crowd of hurrying strangers bewildered her.  Her loneliness appalled her.  She had an insane longing to rush back to her cabin and hide herself.  But she pressed on, on into the Customs house, following her little pile of luggage that looked so ludicrously insignificant among all the rest.