But obviously she did not intend to. Quite the contrary!
“There is something,” she was murmuring, “that would help me very much.”
There, I had done it! I was an ass of the common or garden variety, who first resolved to keep out of a queer business and then, because a girl looked bothered, plunged into it up to my ears. I succeeded in hiding my feelings, in looking wooden.
“Please tell me,” I responded, “what it is.”
“But—I can’t explain it.” Her gloved hands tightened on the railing. “And if I ask without explaining, it will seem so—so strange.”
“Doubtless,” I reflected grimly. But I had to see the thing through now. “That doesn’t matter at all,” I assured her civilly through clenched teeth.
She came closer—so close that her fur coat brushed me, and her breath touched my cheek; her eyes, like gray stars now that they were less anxious, went to my head a little, I suppose. Oh, yes, she was lovely. Of course that was a factor. If she had been past her first youth and skimpy as to hair, and dowdy, I don’t pretend that I should ever have mixed myself up in the preposterous coil.
“This paper,” she whispered, holding out the sheet, “has something in it. It is not about me; it is not even true. But if it stays aboard the ship,—if some one sees it, it may make trouble. Oh, you see how it sounds; I knew you would think me mad!”
“Not in the least.” What an absurd rigmarole she was uttering! Yet such was the spell of her eyes, her voice, her nearness that I merely felt like saying, “Tell me some more.”
“I can’t destroy it myself,” she went on anxiously. “He—they—mustn’t see me do anything that might lead them to—to guess. But no one will think of you, nobody will be watching you; so by and by will you weight the paper with something heavy and drop it across the rail?”
My head was whirling, but a graven image might have envied me my impassivity. I bowed. “I shall be delighted,” I announced banally, “to do as you say.”
Her face flushed to a warm wild-rose
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