“It’s a secret,” Keith laughed.  “Tell you later.  Fire away!” He tasted the soup, while Jenny looked at five little letter biscuits in her own plate.  She spelt them out E T K I H—­KEITH.  He watched her, enjoying the spectacle of the naive mind in action as the light darted into her face.  “I’ve got JENNY,” he said, embarrassed.  She craned, and read the letters with open eyes of marvel.  They both beamed afresh at the primitive fancy.

“How did you do it?” Jenny asked inquisitively.  “But it’s nice.”  They supped the soup.  Followed, whitebait:  thousands of little fish....  Jenny hardly liked to crunch them.  Keith whipped away the plates, and dived back into the cabin with a huge pie that made her gasp.  “My gracious!” said Jenny.  “I can never eat it!”

“Not all of it,” Keith admitted.  “Just a bit, eh?” He carved.

“Oh, thank goodness it’s not stew and bread and butter pudding!” cried Jenny, as the first mouthful of the pie made her shut her eyes tightly.  “It’s like heaven!”

“If they have pies there.”  Jenny had not meant that:  she had meant only that her sensations were those of supreme contentment.  “Give me the old earth; and supper with Jenny!”

“Really?” Jenny was all brimming with delight.

“What will you have to drink?  Claret?  Burgundy?” Keith was again upon his feet.  He poured out a large glass of red wine and laid it before her.  Jenny saw with marvel the reflections of light on the wine and of the wine upon the tablecloth.  She took a timid sip, and the wine ran tingling into her being.

“High life,” she murmured.  “Don’t make me tipsy!” They exchanged overjoyed and intimate glances, laughing.

There followed trifle.  Trifle had always been Jenny’s dream; and this trifle was her dream come true.  It melted in the mouth; its flavours were those of innumerable spices.  She was transported with happiness at the mere thought of such trifle.  As her palate vainly tried to unravel the secrets of the dish, Keith, who was closely observant, saw that she was lost in a kind of fanatical adoration of trifle.

“You like it?” he asked.

“I shall never forget it!” cried Jenny.  “Never as long as I live.  When I’m an old ... great-aunt....”  She had hesitated at her destiny.  “I shall bore all the kids with tales about it.  I shall say ’That night on the yacht ... when I first knew what trifle meant....’  They won’t half get sick of it.  But I shan’t.”

“You’ll like to think about it?” asked Keith.  “Like to remember to-night?”

“Will you?” parried Jenny.  “The night you had Jenny Blanchard to supper?” Their eyes met, in a long and searching glance, in which candour was not unmixed with a kind of measuring distrust.

vii

Keith’s face might have been carven for all the truth that Jenny got from it then.  There darted across her mind the chauffeur’s certainty that she was to be his passenger.  She took another sip of wine.