I withdrew to ponder. I had been in continuous if desultory communication with my sisters during all my time abroad, and no mention of Regina Barry had ever escaped either. I had not supposed that they knew one another. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that I had been under the same roof with her at Taplow and had not been aware of it. And here she was on board the ship on which I was returning home, and able to come to my aid at a minute when I wanted help. I had often wished that some of my New York correspondents would speak of her, but no one ever had. Except in the case of Cantyre this was hardly strange, for—apart from Hilda Grace, who never wrote to me—no one knew that Regina Barry and I had meant anything to each other. If Cantyre had spoken of her, it would have been on his own account; but confidential as he was in private talk, his letters were never more than a few terse lines. So I had rather bitterly imagined her as going on with the testing of other men, as she had tested Jim Hunter, Cantyre, and me—trying them and finding them wanting. In ungenerous moments I went so far as to hope that Nemesis might overtake her in some tremendous passion in which she herself would be tried and tossed aside. It was, however, the second day out before I actually came face to face with her. Her absence from the deck had been part of the mystery. Having swung into the Mersey, we remained there all Sunday night—it was a Sunday we had gone on board—and much of Monday. Accepting as necessary the secrecy which in war-time enshrouds an Atlantic voyage, the passengers had made themselves as comfortable as the conditions permitted, and taken air and exercise by promenading the decks. There could have been no better opportunity for finding familiar faces, but, apart from one or two distant acquaintances, I saw none. The three nurses’ uniforms I had noted already were continually about; but I never found the fourth. And then on Tuesday, after we had lost sight of the Irish coast, there was another queer little incident. As I could walk but little, I had been reading in the music-room. Tired of doing that and eager to continue my search for the missing uniform, I had limped to the doorway, screened by a heavy portière, leading out toward the companionway. But while I stood turning up the collar of my overcoat the portière was suddenly pulled aside, and we were before each other, with a suggestion of a similar occurrence three and a half years before.