With which he marched off down the deck, his head very high in the air. Miss Watts sat down beside Isabelle with a quick glance at her.
"Weren't you talking to Captain O'Leary?"
"Isn't he charming? All the women are so excited about him."
She went over that interview dozens of times. Of course he would never look at her again. She remembered how Mrs. Darlington purred over him--how Madam Van Dyke patted him. That was the way to make him like you, but she had scratched and spit at him, like an angry kitten. She couldn't imagine why she had acted like that. She admired him immensely. He was more attractive than Jerry Paxton or Sidney Cartel or any man she had ever loved, and yet--she had deliberately made him hate her. Well, anyhow, she liked the idea of her heart being as hard as the rocks in Flodden Field. It had an important sound. He could never say that to the gushing Mrs. Darlington, or any of the other women who ran around after him.
So she closed the chapter of their acquaintance on the boat, but she worked out a scene or two at Bermuda, including an aeroplane flight in which he and she were lost in the clouds. On the whole she preferred the things she made up to the things that happened.
As they neared the Islands the weather grew warmer. White clothes appeared on deck. Captain O'Leary appeared in an undress uniform that caused a flutter in feminine hearts. The night of the day of her encounter with her hero was stuffy and very hot.
Isabelle was restless and wakeful. She tossed and turned and tried to banish all thoughts of the Irishman, but it was no use. She leaned out of her upper berth to gaze down upon the sleeping features of Miss Watts.
"How wonderful to be so old that you don't care about handsome Irishmen!" mused Isabelle.
A few minutes later she decided that, unless she had some air, she would perish. She made a most careful descent from her perch, without waking her companion. She opened the door cautiously, and put her head out. It was a trifle cooler in the passageway. Her watch reported three o'clock. There would be no one awake at that hour.
She put on her slippers, and the tight little orange-and-black Chinese cloak. She left the door open, and went into the corridor. She walked up and down, up and down, trying to believe that she was cooler. It was rather spooky! Several stateroom doors stood open, and the sound of sleepers--breathing evenly, or snoring--came to her as she passed.