them alone," the doctor replied.
"I prefer to."
Katharine glanced up in surprise.
"Surely you are not in earnest?" she asked. "What else am I here for?
I suppose you realise that I am fully qualified?"
The doctor unbent a little.
"I am perfectly well aware of that. Miss Beverley," he said, "and it may be that there are times when I shall be glad of your help, and in any case," he went on, "I shall have to ask you to take a share in the night watching. But the surgical part of the case has been a great responsibility, and I couldn't afford to have the slightest thing in the world happen to one of my bandages."
Katharine nodded.
"You are thinking of Nurse Lynn," she observed. "But really I am very careful."
"I am sure of it," the doctor acknowledged, "but so long as I am here, with nothing else to do and a very heavy fee if by any chance I bring my man through, I may just as well see to these things myself. At any moment I might need your help, and I am very happy, Miss Beverley, to think that I shall have some one like you to fall back upon. My great hope," he went on, "is that we may get him across without a touch of the angina."
"Will he ever get well?" she asked.
The doctor shook his head doubtfully.
"One can never tell," he said. "It is just one of these cases which are very close to the borderland. With luck he may pull through, may even become a fairly strong man again, but he doesn't look as though he had much of a physique. Sometime or other the day will come when life or death for him will depend entirely upon his will."
She nodded and moved away. "My stateroom is just opposite, if you want me at any time, doctor," she said.
He bowed and closed the door after her. Katharine made her way into her cabin, sat on her steamer trunk and looked around a little helplessly. The confusion of thought in which she had come on board was only increased by this introduction to doctor and patient. A presentiment of strange and imminent happenings kept her seated there long after the dressing bugle had sounded.
The City of Boston was four hours out of harbour, with her course set direct for Liverpool. The passengers, of whom there were only a very moderate number, had taken possession of their staterooms, examined their lifebelts, eaten their first meal, and were now, at eight o'clock on a fine June evening, mostly strolling about the deck or reclining in steamer chairs. There was none of the old-time feeling that a six-days' holiday was before them, a six-days' freedom from all anxiety and care. Even in these first few hours of their enterprise a certain strain of suppressed excitement was almost universally noticeable. There was no escaping from grim facts, and the facts were brought home to them all the time by those two businesslike destroyers flying the Stars and Stripes, and whose decks were swept continually by a deluge of green salt water. Amongst the few people who conversed there was but one subject of conversation, a subject which every one affected to treat lightly, and yet which no one managed to discuss without signs of anxiety.
"This thing will get on all our nerves before we are over," Brand, a breezy newspaper man from the West, observed. "What with boat drill three times a day, and lifebelt parade going on all the time on the deck, one doesn't get a chance to forget that we are liable to get a torpedo in our side at any moment."
"Oh, these little gnats of Uncle Sam's will look after us!" a more cheerful confrère observed. "Come into the smoking room and I'll buy you a drink."
A good deal of courage seemed to be sought in that direction, and presently, although the afterglow of the sunset was still brilliant, the decks were almost deserted. On the starboard side, only a man and a woman remained, and gradually, as though with a certain unwillingness, they drifted closer together. The woman, who wore a black and white check coat over her blue serge steamer dress, and a small black hat from which she had pushed back the veil, was leaning over the side of the steamer, her head supported by her hand, looking steadily into the mass of red and orange clouds. The man, who was smoking a cigar, with both hands in his ulster pockets, seemed as though he would have passed her, but without turning her head she held out her hand and beckoned him to her side.
"I was beginning to wonder whether you were an absentee," Katharine remarked.
"I have been making friends with the captain," Jocelyn Thew replied.
"Please arrange my chair," she begged. "I should like to sit down."
He did as he was asked, arranging her rugs with the care of an old traveler. All his movements were very deliberate, even the searching way in which his eyes swept the long row of empty chairs on either side of them, and the care with which he fastened two open portholes above their heads. Finally he accepted her invitation and sat by her side.
"I have seen you once before," she observed, "just before we started."
"Yes?" he murmured.
"You were standing on the upper deck," she continued, "a little away from the others. You had your glasses glued to your eyes and you watched the dock. You had the air of one looking for a late arrival. Do you know of any one who has missed the boat?"
"I think so."
"A friend?"
"No, an enemy," he answered equably.
She turned her head a little. It was obvious that he was speaking the truth.
"So you have enemies?"
"A great many," he acknowledged, "one in particular just now.
Perhaps," he went on, "I should say an opponent."
"If that is so," she remarked, after a moment's pause, "you should be glad that he missed the boat."
Jocelyn Thew smiled.
"I am," he admitted. "It was part of my plan that he should miss it."
She moved uneasily in her chair.
"So you haven't finished with adventures yet?"
"Not just yet."
There was a brief silence. Then she turned her head a little, leaning it still on the back of the chair but watching him as she spoke.
"I have seen my patient," she told him. "I have also had some conversation with the doctor."
"Well?"
"I am beginning to think," she continued, "that you must be a philanthropist."
"Why?"
"You hinted," she went on, "that your friend was in poor circumstances. You did not tell me, though, that you were paying the whole expenses of this trip, just so that the man should see his home and his family before he died."
"I told you that the care of him was a charge upon me," Jocelyn Thew reminded her. "That amounts to the same thing, doesn't it? I was clever enough, anyhow, to get a good nurse at a small fee."
"I am not at all sure," she replied, "that I shall not charge you something outrageous.
