heard a soft voice close behind him.

"Is that you, Mr. Royson?" it said, and he was called back from the
unknown to find Miss Fenshawe standing near.

"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "I was--so taken up with this--to
me--most entrancing experience--"

"That you did not hear my fairy footsteps," she broke in, with a quiet
laugh. "Do not apologize for that. I am wearing list slippers, so my
ghostlike approach is easily accounted for. And I am really very
greatly relieved at having found you at all. I was afraid you had left
the ship without my knowledge."

"But how could that be possible, Miss Fenshawe?" he asked, startled out
of his reverie by her peculiar phrase.

"Please don't speak so loudly," she said, dropping her voice almost to
a whisper. "I have been looking for you during the past half hour. I
came here twice, but you were so wrapped up in shadow that I failed to
see you, and I was becoming quite anxious, because one of the men
assured me you were not in your cabin."

Dick caught a flurried note in her utterance, a strained desire to
avoid the semblance of that anxiety which she had just admitted. It
puzzled him quite as much as the curious sense of familiarity with his
surroundings, a sense which the girl's unexpected appearance had by no
means dispelled. And he was oddly conscious of a breaking away of the
social barrier of whose existence she, at least, must have been
convinced. The mere whispering together in this lonely part of the ship