And again she laughed. "I'm afraid there isn't any cure for me at this late date," she protested; "I've gone so far I must go farther. But I know what you mean. People who sing _are_ difficult. However ..." She stirred restlessly in her chair, then sat up. "What is that light over there?" she asked. "Do you know?" Staff's gaze sought the indicated direction. "Roches Point, I imagine; we're about due at Queenstown ..." "As late as that?" The girl moved as if to rise. Staff jumped up and offered her a hand. In a moment she was standing beside him. "I must go below," said she. "Good night." "You won't tell me who it was in Lucille's, yesterday?" he harked back pleadingly. She shook her head gaily as she turned forward to the main companionway entrance: "No; you must find out for yourself." "But perhaps it isn't a practical joke?" "Then--_perhaps_--I shall tell you all--sometime." He paused by the raised door-sill as she stepped within the superstructure. "Why not stop up and see the tender come off?" he suggested. "It might be interesting." She flashed him a look of gay malice. "If we're to believe Mrs. Ilkington, you're apt to find it more interesting than I. Good night." "Oh--good night!" he muttered, disturbed; and turned away to the rail. His troubled vision ranged far to the slowly shifting shore lights. The big steamship had come very close inshore--as witness the retarded speed with which she crept toward her anchorage--but still the lights, for all their singular brightness, seemed distant, incalculably far away; the gulf of blackness that set them apart exaggerated all distances tenfold. The cluster of sparks flanked by green and red that marked the hovering tender appeared to float at an infinite remove, invisibly buoyed upon the bosom of a fathomless void of night. Out of this wind-swept waste of impenetrable darkness was to come the answer to these many questions that perplexed him--perhaps. Something at least would come to influence him; or else Mrs. Ilkington's promise had been mere _blague_.... Then what? Afterwards he assured himself that his stupidity had been unparalleled inconceivable. And indeed there seems to be some colour of excuse for this drastic stricture, self-inflicted though it were. Below him, on the main deck, a squad of deckhands superintended by a petty officer was rigging out the companion-ladder. Very suddenly--it seemed, because of the immense quiet that for all its teeming life enveloped the ship upon the cessation of the engine's song--the vessel hesitated and then no longer moved. From forward came the clank of chains as the anchor cables were paid out. Supple to wind and tide, the Autocratic swung in a wide arc, until the lights of the tender disappeared from Staff's field of vision. Before long, however, they swam silently again into sight; then slowly, cautiously, by almost imperceptible stages the gap closed up until the tender ranged alongside and made fast to her gigantic sister.