"In a week, no doubt," rejoined Knightley, "I shall be less sensible
of its humour. But to-night--well, I am home in Tangier, and that
contents me. Nothing has changed." At that he stopped suddenly.
"Nothing has changed?" This time the phrase was put as a question, and
with the halting timidity which he had shown before. No one answered
the question. "No, nothing has changed," he said a third time, and
again his eyes began to travel wistfully from face to face.

Tessin abruptly turned his back; Shackleton blinked his eyes at the
ceiling with altogether too profound an unconcern; Scrope reached out
for the wine, and spilt it as he filled his glass; Wyley busily drew
diagrams with a wet finger on the table.

All these details Knightley remarked. He laid down his fork, he rested
his elbow on the table, his forehead upon his hand. Then absently he
began to hum over to himself a tune. The rhythm of it was somehow
familiar to the Surgeon's ears. Where had he heard it before? Then
with a start he remembered. It was this very rhythm, that very tune,
which Scrope's fingers had beaten out on the table when he first
saw Knightley. And as he had absently drummed it then, so Knightley
absently hummed it now.

Surely, then, the tune had some part in the relations of the two
men--perhaps a part in this story. "A foolish song." The words flashed
into Wyley's mind.

"She was singing a foolish song." What if the tune was the tune of
that song? But then--Wyley's argument came to a sudden conclusion. For
if the tune _was_ the tune of that song, why, then Knightley must know