A day or so later Jerome, emerging from the office of a ships’ broker,
met Elsa again. She was swinging along in her independent way, and he
thought she had not even seen him, till abruptly she paused, her gaze
just lighted, incidentally, by a smile of greeting.
“Have you found a ship yet?” she asked.
“Yes, there’s a sailing for Yokohama in a few days. We’re going on there
and take a Pacific Mail boat back to San Francisco.”
“I suppose you’re anxious to start.”
“No, I’m not.”
“No?” Her blankness was disturbed by the merest flicker.
“Borneo’s out in the world, and San Francisco isn’t,” he explained,
smiling a little, but obviously serious, too.
“I see what you mean,” she said after a pause. “It’s quite interesting.
It even makes Borneo almost tolerable.”
“Well,” he qualified, “of course I don’t necessarily mean Borneo in
particular.”
“I understand. Why do you go back, then?”
It was almost the very thing Lili had asked him when the proposition of
his returning ignominiously from Honolulu held the boards. However, it
was with by no means the old air of helplessness and groping that he
put squarely up to Elsa the question: “What else can I do?” Openings in
Borneo were not conspicuously numerous—that was certain.
She gazed at him intently. And then she murmured in even tones: “True,
what else could you do?”
He looked off toward the harbour a little dreamily. “Perhaps,” he said,
“something will turn up in Yokohama. We have nearly a week there, and I
mean to pry around.”
“Yes, I would.” But somehow her look seemed not precisely to fit the
words. And after a moment she asked him: “Is there anything you have in
mind that you’d like to do?”
“Oh, no,” he replied with quite worldly carelessness. “Anything that
would keep me busy and not let me drop back into a slump again.”
“You think there might be danger?” she calmly laughed.
“I don’t know,” he smiled. “I don’t want to try!” And then he asked her:
“How much longer are you staying on, Miss Utterbourne?”
She shrugged. “You never can tell what the Captain may take it into his
head to do. I never dare go very far away from the ship for fear they’ll
suddenly decide to haul up and move off. But as long as I stick around
and look eager it’s just another case of the watched pot. I’m ready
anytime he is,” she concluded, her eyes drooping.
“And you don’t know where you go from here, I suppose?”
“No.” She moved her head a little restlessly.
After a moment she said: “Well,” nodded informally, and went on. Jerome
watched her till she disappeared from view—a trim, independent figure,
with youthful stride.