"But you, yourself?" interposed his companion. McKinnon touched his pocket.
"I've had to carry this, now and then, even before this trouble. But we can't lose anything by keeping in touch with him. And there's always the chance of my wireless picking up something."
"Suppose Captain Yandel has spoken to him of the scene in your room?" asked the girl, apparently disturbed by some new thought.
"Which scene?"
"When you told him I was your—your wife," she explained, with heightened colour.
"I'm sorry I had to stoop to a trick like that," said the other, with unexpected humility.
"It will make it so much harder, later," she ventured.
"I'm sorry," was all he could say. Her face suddenly coloured with a deeper flush at the thought that he had misinterpreted her.
"By later I mean all that we may have to go through before we are off this ship."
"Then escape from this ship is to be counted the end of everything?" he asked.
"No, no;" she murmured, "the beginning."
"Could it be the beginning I am hoping for?"
She drew back from him and looked about her, as though she had suddenly reawakened to their immediate surroundings.
