"Dancing!" she cried. "I believe they're dancing. Why, I haven't even heard the music since I left New York! Come along!"
She had reached the companion ladder before he could catch her up. Already her feet were moving to the music.
"Look here," he confided doubtfully, "remember I've been out of England for a very long time. I'm not at all sure that I can manage these new steps."
She slipped her arm through his in friendly fashion.
"You're the only man on board I know, and you've got to," she declared imperiously.
"Perkins," Gregory demanded, as he struggled into his dinner coat a few nights later, "what should you think if I told you to drop that grinning piece of wooden monstrosity there into the sea?"
The steward glanced doubtfully over his shoulder at the Image.
"It's a damned ugly piece of goods, sir," he admitted, "but I shouldn't make away with it like that. It's very likely valuable. They give no end of money sometimes for genuine bits of stuff from China way."
Gregory straightened his tie and looked at his treasure fixedly.
"Perkins," he confided, "that Image is either worth a few hundred, or perhaps a thousand pounds as an antique, or it may be worth--listen to me--a million." The steward coughed. He was inclined to think that this passenger of his, on whom the slackness of the season had enabled him to bestow more than his normal share of attention, was a trifle cracked.
"If it is worth as much money as that, sir," he remarked, "it would be a sin to think of getting rid of it."
"You're quite right," Gregory assented, "it would be a sin. We'll let it stay where it is."
At his table in the dining saloon he trifled with his dinner and covertly watched the girl seated by the captain's side, who, on his entrance, had sent him a little wave of welcome. He had worshipped more or less casually at the shrine of girls and women of all ages, but never with quite the same restless and fitful confusion of feeling as had swept over him occasionally during the last few days in her near presence, or at the thought of her in his sleepless hours. She was, he tried to tell himself, as he studied her with eyes that attempted to be critical, an ordinary, pleasant-looking, good-looking, attractive girl, like hundreds of others of her age, too young and too lacking in experience to justify a great passion. Her yellow hair, her one real beauty, was brushed backwards with a touch almost of severity; a fashion, however, which the vivacity of her face justified. Her eyes, he had to admit, were unusual; grave and tender sometimes, full of the sparkle of humour when, as now, she was engaged in light-hearted conversation. Her mouth was perhaps almost too sensitive, but it was beautifully shaped, and not over-small. He watched her rise and walk out of the saloon; a girl's figure still, but with just a suggestion of coming power in her easy, flowing movements.