Having learned what he wanted to know Ford applied to the wound a soothing ointment of promises and encouragement.

“He’s as good as found,” he protested.  “You will see him in a day, two days after you land.”

The girl’s eyes opened happily.  She clasped her hands together and raised them.

“You will try?” she begged.  “You will find him for me”—­she corrected herself eagerly—­“for me and the baby?”

The loose sleeves of the kimono fell back to her shoulders showing the white arms; the eyes raised to Ford were glistening with tears.

“Of course I will find him,” growled the reporter.

He freed himself from the appeal in the eyes of the young mother and left the cabin.  The doctor followed.  He was bubbling over with enthusiasm.

“That was fine!” he cried.  “You said just the right thing.  There will be no collapse now.”

His satisfaction was swept away in a burst of disgust.

“The blackguard!” he protested.  “To desert a wife as young as that and as pretty as that.”

“So I have been thinking,” said the reporter.  “I guess,” he added gravely, “what is going to happen is that before I find her husband I will have got to know him pretty well.”

Apparently, young Mrs. Ashton believed everything would come to pass just as Ford promised it would and as he chose to order it; for the next day, with a color not born of fever in her cheeks and courage in her eyes, she joined Ford and the doctor at the luncheon-table.  Her attention was concentrated on the younger man.  In him she saw the one person who could bring her husband to her.

“She acts,” growled the doctor later in the smoking-room, “as though she was afraid you were going to back out of your promise and jump overboard.

“Don’t think,” he protested violently, “it’s you she’s interested in.  All she sees in you is what you can do for her.  Can you see that?”

“Any one as clever at seeing things as I am,” returned the reporter, “cannot help but see that.”

Later, as Ford was walking on the upper deck, Mrs. Ashton came toward him, beating her way against the wind.  Without a trace of coquetry or self-consciousness, and with a sigh of content, she laid her hand on his arm.

“When I don’t see you,” she exclaimed as simply as a child, “I feel so frightened.  When I see you I know all will come right.  Do you mind if I walk with you?” she asked.  “And do you mind if every now and then I ask you to tell me again it will all come right?”

For the three days following Mrs. Ashton and Ford were constantly together.  Or, at least, Mrs. Ashton was constantly with Ford.  She told him that when she sat in her cabin the old fears returned to her, and in these moments of panic she searched the ship for him.

The doctor protested that he was growing jealous.

“I’m not so greatly to be envied,” suggested Ford. “‘Harry’ at meals three times a day and on deck all the rest of the day becomes monotonous.  On a closer acquaintance with Harry he seems to be a decent sort of a young man; at least he seems to have been at one time very much in love with her.”