But it was too late to stop me. I couldn’t have stopped myself. I was carried on by the impetus that came from my having been so many years held back. I was no longer the consecrated servant of a cause. As for having been a drunkard and a thief, no shadow of remembrance stayed with me. I was simply a man head over heels in love with a woman, and in all sorts of stupid, stumbling phrases saying so. She listened because she couldn’t do anything else without walking away; but she listened with a kind of aloofness. With her clasped hands resting on the rail and her little, black silhouette held quietly erect, she gazed off toward a great white star, which I suppose must have been Capella, and heard my tale because she couldn’t stop it. “Listen,” I went on, leaning on an arm extended along the rail. “I’ll tell you your story. I’ve pieced it together and I know what it is. I didn’t know it when I came on board. It puzzled me.” Her lips moved, but there was no turn of her head or stir of her person. “Please don’t. I’m—I’m not sure that I could bear it.” “Why shouldn’t I? You’ve done certain things. Let me give you their interpretation.” “If I do—” she began, weakly. I couldn’t allow her to continue. “I see now the explanation of so many things that bewildered me at first—that made me suffer. That day at Rosyth, for instance, when you went in and left me, you didn’t despise or hate me. You may have been disillusioned—” “It isn’t the word,” she murmured, still motionless, and looking off at the big white star. “I’d been thinking of you as the kind of man I’d—I’d been looking for so long.” “And you saw I was less so than any of the others.” “I’m not saying that. But if you think it was easy to tear up all one’s conceptions by the roots and plant in new ones—however kindly—all at once—” “Oh no, I don’t! not now. But at that time I didn’t know you. It’s only been since coming on board and finding out what you’ve done—” Curiosity prompted her to glance round at me. “Then it was only since coming on board?” “Oh, it was simple enough. It’s silly to keep up the secret. I was talking, while we were still in the dock at Liverpool, with that handsome Canadian nurse.” “Miss Ogden. She was matron of the hospital at—” “She knew who you were. She couldn’t tell me your name, but she said—or Miss Prynne said—that you’d come over with Evelyn—that you’d been at Taplow with Mabel—” “I know; the sort of thing that goes round among nurses.” “And so I put two and two together and formed a theory.” “You needn’t tell me what it is. Please don’t.” “But I want to.” I hurried on before she could protest further. “When you saw that you’d—you’d hurt me—that day at Rosyth—and that I had disappeared—and gone into the army—and away to England—you got into touch with Evelyn—”