It was after a long interval that she became aware of the reappearance of Musa. Seemingly, he had been in the engine-room; since the beginning of the cruise he had shown a fancy for both the engine-room and the engineer. To her surprise, he marched straight towards her deckchair. "I must speak to you," he said with emotion. "Must you?" Audrey replied, full of hot resentment. "I think you've been horrid, Musa. Perfectly horrid! But I suppose you have your own notions of politeness now. Everything has been done for you, and--" "What is that?" he stopped her. "Everything has been done for me. What is it that has been done for me? I play for years, I am ignored. Then I succeed. I am noticed. Men of affairs offer me immense sums. But am I surprised? Not the least in the world. It is the contrary which would have surprised me. It was inevitable that I should succeed. But note well--it is I myself who succeed. It is not my friends. It is not the concert agent. Do I regard the concert agent as a benefactor? Again, not the least in the world. You say everything has been done for me. Nothing has been done for me, Madame." "Yes, yes," faltered Audrey, who was in a dilemma, and therefore more resentful than ever. "I--I only mean your friends have always stood by you." She gathered courage, sat up erect in her deck-chair, and finished haughtily: "And now you're conceited. You're insufferably conceited." "Because I refused to play?" He laughed stridently and grimly. "No. I refused to play because I could not, because I was outside myself with jealousy. Yes, jealousy. You do not know jealousy. Perhaps you are incapable of it. But permit me to tell you, Madame, that jealousy is one of the finest and most terrible emotions. And that is why I must speak to you. I cannot live and see you flirt so seriously with that old idiot. I cannot live." Audrey jumped up from the chair. "Musa! I shall never speak to you again.... Me ... flirt.... And you call Mr. Gilman an old idiot!" "What words would you employ, Madame? He was so agitated by your intimate conversation that he brought us all near to death, in any case. Moreover, it jumps to the eyes that the decrepit satyr is mad about you. Mad!" And Musa's voice broke. In the midst of all her fury Audrey was relieved that it did break, for the reason that it was getting very loud, and the wheel, with Captain Wyatt thereat, was not far off. There was one thing to do, and Audrey did it. She walked away rapidly. And, as she did so, she was startled to discover a sob in her throat. The drawn, highly emotionalised face of Musa remained with her. She was angry, indignant, infuriated, and yet her feelings were not utterly unpleasant, though she wanted them to be so. In the first place, they were exciting. And in the second place--what was it?--well, she had the strange, sweet sensation of being, somehow, the mainspring of the universe, of being immensely important in the scheme of things.