“Well, he brought that on himself!” said Audrey, smiling.

“He did,” Mr. Gilman concurred, gazing at the Hard with inimical scorn.

“She can’t come—­now,” said Audrey.  “It wouldn’t be safe.  He means to stay on the Hard till we’re gone.  He’s a very suspicious man.”

Mr. Hurley was indeed lingering just beyond the immediate range of the Ariadne’s lamps.

“Can’t come!  What a pity!  What a pity!” murmured Mr. Gilman, with an accent that was not a bit sincere.  The news was the best he had heard for hours.  “But I suppose,” he added, “we’d better sail just the same, as I’ve said we should?” He did not want to run the risk of getting Jane Foley after all.

“Oh!  Do!” Audrey exclaimed.  “It will be lovely!  If it doesn’t rain—­and even if it does rain!  We all like sailing at night....  Are the others in the saloon?  I’ll run down.”

“Mr. Wyatt,” the owner sternly accosted the captain.  “When can we get off?”

“Oh!  About midnight,” Audrey answered quickly, before Mr. Wyatt could compose his lips.

The men gazed at each other surprised by this show of technical knowledge in a young widow.  By the time Mr. Wyatt had replied, Audrey was descending into the saloon.  It was Aguilar who, having ascertained the Ariadne’s draught, had made the calculation as to the earliest possible hour of departure.

And in the saloon Musa was, as it were, being enveloped and kept comfortable in the admiring sympathy of Madame Piriac and Miss Thompkins.  Mr. Gilman’s violin lay across his knees—­perhaps he had been tuning it—­and the women inclined towards him, one on either side.  It was a sight that somewhat annoyed Audrey, who told herself that she considered it silly.  Admitting that Musa had genius, she could not understand this soft flattery of genius.  She never flattered genius herself, and she did not approve of others doing so.  Certainly Musa was now being treated on the yacht as a celebrity of the first order, and Audrey could find no explanation of the steady growth in the height and splendour of his throne.  Her arrival dissolved the spectacle.  Within one minute, somehow, the saloon was empty and everybody on deck again.

And then, drawing her away, Musa murmured to Audrey in a disconcerting tone that he must speak to her on a matter of urgency, and that in order that he might do so, they must go ashore and walk seawards, far from interruption.  She consented, for she was determined to prove to him at close quarters that she was a different creature from the other two.  They moved to the gangway amid discreet manifestations from the doctor and the secretary—­manifestations directed chiefly to Musa and indicative of his importance as a notability.  Audrey was puzzled.  For her, Musa was more than ever just Musa, and less than ever a personage.