“I’ll go on,” she said, “and don’t interrupt me for a little while. There was a very light wind--you hardly felt it aft--and I was standing looking over the sea. He came up to me and began to talk about some trifle--I forget what it was, but it doesn’t matter. But I was afraid mamma would come up and look for me, so I said I was going down to read. But I waited for just a minute more--I suppose I expected him to ask me not to go. He said nothing, but took one big pull at his cigar, gave one big big puff of smoke out of his mouth and nose, and then threw the cigar overboard. ‘Good-night, Mr Walsh,’ I said. He looked at me--it was as light as it is now--and said: ‘Will you give me one minute, Miss Cochrane?’ ‘Well, only a minute,’ I said, smiling. I was really afraid about mamma. ‘I want to tell you something,’ he said. I wonder if I blushed--and whether he could see if I did. I expect I did, and that he saw, because he went on very quickly: ‘Something that doesn’t matter much to you, but matters a bit to me.’ ‘Go on,’ I said. I was quite calm again now, because--well, because I saw he was going to say something serious--I mean, not of the sort I--I had thought he might be going to say before.” “You saw he wasn’t making love to you, you mean?” “I told you not to interrupt--but I daresay that’s putting it as nearly right as you can understand.” I murmured thanks for this rather contemptuous forgiveness. “Then he told me,” Mrs Pryce went on, “just simply told me--and said he was going to make some excuse for asking the purser to put him at another table.” “But you can’t leave it like that!” I expostulated. “You’re throwing away all your dramatic effect. What did he say? His words, his words, Mrs Pryce!” “He didn’t use any--not in the sense you mean. He just told me. He didn’t even put me on my honour not to tell anybody else. He said he didn’t care a hang about anybody else on board, but that he wanted to spare me any possible shock, and that he’d been concerned in the bond robbery and would probably be arrested at Queenstown, but that he expected to get off this time. I think I repeated ‘This time!’ because I remember he said then that he was a thief by profession, and couldn’t expect good luck every time. That was like what he said yesterday, wasn’t it?” “And what did you say? It must have been a bad quarter of an hour for you. Because you’d liked him a good deal, hadn’t you?” “Yes, a lot. But”--she turned to me, smiling now--“it wasn’t bad at all, really.” She gave a little laugh--a laugh with pleasant reminiscence in it. “You were a cool hand for your age,” I ventured to observe. “It was the way he did it,” she said. “Somehow I felt he was paying me a very high compliment.” “Oh, I agree!” I laughed.