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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sive, 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 impa.s.sivity 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."

"What do you mean by that?" He turned squarely and looked down at her.

She hesitated a little, but eventually she told him.

"I thought there would have been a letter for me from Robin at Aden, but there wasn't. It has worried me rather."

"Robin?" he said interrogatively.

"Robin Wentworth, the man I am going to marry," she explained. "He has a farm at Bowker Creek, near Rollandstown. But he will meet me at the docks. He has promised to do that. Still, I thought I should have heard from him again."

"But you will hear at Colombo," said Mercer.

She raised her eyes--- those soft, dark eyes that were her only beauty.

"I may," she said.

"And if you don't?"

She smiled faintly.

"I suppose I shall worry some more."

"Are you sure the fellow is worth it?" asked Mercer unexpectedly.

"We have been engaged for three years," she said, "though we have been separated."

He frowned.

"A man can alter a good deal in three years."

She did not attempt to dispute the point. It was one of the many doubts that tormented her in moments of depression.

"And what will you do if he doesn't turn up?" proceeded Mercer.

She gave a sharp shiver.

"Don't--don't frighten me!" she said.

Mercer was silent. He thrust one hand into his pocket, and absently jingled some coins. He began to whistle under his breath, and then, awaking to the fact, abruptly stopped himself.

"If I were in your place," he said at length, "I should get off at Colombo and sail home again on the next boat."

Sybil shook her head slowly but emphatically.

"I am quite sure you wouldn't. For one thing you would be too poor, and for another you would be too proud."

"Are you very poor?" he asked her point blank.

She nodded.

"And very proud."

"And your people?"

"Only my father is living, and I have quarrelled with him."

"Can't you make it up?"

"No," she said sharply and emphatically. "I could never return to my father. There is no room for me now that he has married again. I would sooner sell matches at a street corner than go back to what I have left."

"So that's it, is it?" said Mercer. He was looking at her very attentively with his brows drawn down. "You are not happy at home, so you are plunging into matrimony to get away from it all."