you continued to look upon me as a different sort of person during
this voyage, but I cannot see my way clear to keep silence on this one
point. I wish to inform you, if you do not know it already, that Mr.
Jocelyn Thew is a dangerous person for you to know, or for you to be
associated with in any shape or form." She would have risen to her
feet but he stopped her.

"Please look at me," he begged.

She obeyed, half against her will.

"I want you to ask yourself," he went on, "whether you do not believe
that I am your well-wisher. What I am saying to you, I am saying to
save you from a position which later on you might bitterly regret."

She was conscious of a quality in his tone and manner entirely strange
to her, and she found any form of answer exceedingly difficult. The
anger which she would have preferred to have affected seemed, in the
face of his earnestness, out of place.

"It seems to me," she said, "that you are assuming something which
does not exist. I am not on specially intimate terms with Mr. Jocelyn
Thew. I have not talked to him any more than to any other casual
passenger."

"Is that quite honest?" he asked quietly. "Isn't it true that
Jocelyn Thew is interested in your mysterious patient?"

She started.