I became then really interested. I had never seen a shipwrecked
person before. All the boyishness in me was aroused. I considered
a shipwreck as an unavoidable event sooner or later in my future.

Meantime the man thus distinguished in my eyes glanced quietly
about and never spoke unless addressed directly by one of the
ladies present. There were more than a dozen people in that
drawing-room, mostly women eating fine pastry and talking
passionately. It might have been a Carlist committee meeting of a
particularly fatuous character. Even my youth and inexperience
were aware of that. And I was by a long way the youngest person in
the room. That quiet Monsieur Mills intimidated me a little by his
age (I suppose he was thirty-five), his massive tranquillity, his
clear, watchful eyes. But the temptation was too great--and I
addressed him impulsively on the subject of that shipwreck.

He turned his big fair face towards me with surprise in his keen
glance, which (as though he had seen through me in an instant and
found nothing objectionable) changed subtly into friendliness. On
the matter of the shipwreck he did not say much. He only told me
that it had not occurred in the Mediterranean, but on the other
side of Southern France--in the Bay of Biscay. "But this is hardly
the place to enter on a story of that kind," he observed, looking
round at the room with a faint smile as attractive as the rest of
his rustic but well-bred personality.

I expressed my regret. I should have liked to hear all about it.
To this he said that it was not a secret and that perhaps next time
we met. . .