"_We_ came into port only yesterday. And to think that you and I should
come to the same hotel and meet on the very first morning! It's like a
fate, as our people in the island say. But it's stunning, perfectly
stunning!"
A warm tide of joy was coursing through me and taking away my breath,
but I managed to say:
"I've heard about your expedition. You had great hardships."
"That was nothing! Just a little pleasure-trip down to the eighty-sixth
latitude."
"And great successes?"
"That was nothing either. The chief was jolly good, and the boys were
bricks."
"I'm so glad, so glad!" I said again, for a kind of dumb joy had taken
possession of me, and I went on saying the same thing over and over
again, as people do when they are very happy.
For two full minutes I felt happier than I had ever been in my life
before; and then an icy chill came over me, for I remembered that I had
been married since I saw Martin Conrad last and I did not know how I was
to break the news to him.
Just then my husband and Alma came down the lift, and seeing me with a
stranger, as they crossed the hall to go into the breakfast-room, they
came up and spoke.
I had to introduce them and it was hard to do, for it was necessary to
reveal everything in a word. I looked at Martin Conrad when I presented
him to my husband and he did not move a muscle. Then I looked at my
husband and under a very small bow his face grew dark.
I could not help seeing the difference between the two men as they stood
together--Martin with his sea-blue eyes and his look of splendid health,
and my husband with his sallow cheeks and his appearance of wasted
strength--and somehow from some unsearchable depths of my soul the
contrast humbled me.
When I introduced Alma she took Martin's hand and held it while she
gazed searchingly into his eyes from under her eyebrows, as she always
did when she was being presented to a man; but I saw that in this
instance her glance fell with no more effect on its object than a
lighted vesta on a running stream.
After the usual banal phrases my husband inquired if Martin was staying
in the house, and then asked if he would dine with us some day.
"Certainly! Delighted! With all the pleasure in the world," said Martin.
"Then," said my husband with rather frigid politeness, "you will see
more of your friend Mary."
"Yes," said Alma, in a way that meant much, "you will see more of your
friend Mary."
"Don't you worry about that, ma'am. You _bet_ I will," said Martin,
looking straight into Alma's eyes; and though she laughed as she passed
into the breakfast-room with my husband, I could see that for the first
time in her life a man's face had frightened her.
"Then you knew?" I said, when they were gone.
"Yes; a friend of mine who met you abroad came down to see us into port
and he . . ."
"Dr. O'Sullivan?"
"That's the man! Isn't he a boy? And, my gracious, the way he speaks of
you! But now . . . now you must go to breakfast yourself, and I must be
off about my business."
"Don't go yet," I said.
"I'll stay all day if you want me to; but I promised to meet the
Lieutenant on the ship in half an hour, and . . ."
"Then you must go."
"Not yet. Sit down again. Five minutes will do no harm. And by the way,
now that I look at you again, I'm not so sure that you . . . Italy,
Egypt, there's enough sun down there, but you're pale . . . a little
pale, aren't you?"
I tried to make light of my pallor but Martin looked uneasy, and after a
moment he asked:
"How long are you staying in London?"