She had an instinct that the general would do something disagreeable
about the French and English ports of departure for America. But
perhaps he would not think of the Italian ports. That night she set
out for Genoa, and three days later, in a different dress and with her
hair done as she never wore it, sailed as Miss Mary Stevens for America
on a German Mediterranean boat.
She had taken the whole of a cabin on the quieter deck below the
promenade, paying for it nearly half of what was left of the four
thousand francs. The first three days she kept to her cabin except at
the dinner-hour, when she ventured to the deck just outside and walked
up and down for exercise. Then followed four days of nasty weather
during which she did not leave her bed. As the sea calmed, she,
wretched and reckless, had a chair put for herself under her window and
sat there, veiled and swathed and turning her face away whenever a rare
wandering passenger happened to pass along. Toward noon a man paused
before her to light a cigarette. She, forgetting for the moment her
precautions, looked at him. It chanced that he looked at her at
exactly the same instant. Their glances met. He started nervously,
moved on a few steps, returned. Said she mockingly:
"You know you needn't speak if you don't want to, Stanley."
"There isn't a soul on board that anybody ever knew or that ever knew
anybody," said he. "So why not?"
"And you look horribly bored."
"Unspeakably," replied Baird. "I've spoken to no one since I left
Paris."
"What are you doing on this ship?" inquired she.
"To be perfectly honest," said he, "I came this way to avoid you. I
was afraid you'd take passage on my steamer just to amuse yourself with
my nervousness. And--here you are!"
"Amusing myself with your nervousness."
"But I'm not nervous. There's no danger. Will you let me have a chair
put beside yours?"
"It will be a charity on your part," said she.
When he was comfortably settled, he explained his uneasiness. "I see
I've got to tell you," said he, "for I don't want you to think me a
shouting ass. The fact is my wife wants to get a divorce from me and
to soak me for big alimony. She's a woman who'll do anything to gain
her end, and--well, for some reason she's always been jealous of you. I
didn't care to get into trouble, or to get you into trouble."
"I'm traveling as Mary Stevens," said Mildred. "No one knows I'm
aboard."
"Oh, I'm sure we're quite safe. We can enjoy the rest of this voyage."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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