“Once, when I was so little that I couldn’t talk plainly--so little that you might have balanced me in your hand--a woman came to the tiny room where I lay. It was in the midst of the night. Father was in Asia somewhere. I was awake, I think, because I heard the woman fumbling at the door. She was a big, hysterical thing and suddenly screamed that my mother was dead--then rushed away, leaving me alone in the dark!... It was at a lonely English country-house in winter. I remember the snow and the winds and the gray, tossing sky and the nights. I had to stay there alone until father came home. For more than a month I was in that great house, with naked, sighing trees all around--trees close to the walls of the house. They cut the wind into ribbons and made a constant moaning. And, oh, the nights were eternal! I was in a broad, cold room in the great, creaking house--and always I could hear hard-breathing from somewhere. Alone, I wore out all my fears there--until at last I had no fears, only dreams of the night that lived with me all through the day. I have never gone near that country-place since father came. How terrible he looked! It left me strange and different--so that I was never like a little child afterward.... Routledge-san, why do I tell you all these things? Not in years have I talked so much in one day.” “Nor have I listened so raptly, Noreen.” “I wouldn’t have tried to tell you so much--except that you are to be back in India within a year.... It has come to me, Routledge-san, that you are to go very quickly!” There was a creak of a wicker-chair in the shadows of the engine-room air-shafts behind them. Noreen grasped his arm impulsively. It was not that she had said anything which the world might not hear, but her concentration had been intense, and the little story she had told had been so intimately personal to her that no woman, and only this man, had ever called it forth. There was quick cruelty in the thought of it being overheard by a stranger. In any case, the spell was broken. Routledge was irritated. The recall from the world of the woman, and the feeling of oneness with her which the strange little confidence had inspired, was pure unpleasantness. “I’ll go to my state-room now,” she whispered. “There is only a little while to rest.... Good-night, Routledge-san. I’ll be abroad early.”