There was humour rather than tragedy in the inevitable meeting between Cornelius Blunn and Grant on the Katalonia. On the morning after their departure, Grant, while promenading the deck, heard a feeble tapping against the glass which enclosed the small promenade of one of the magnificent private suites, for which the vessel was famous. Inside Mr. Cornelius Blunn, almost unrecognisable, swathed in rugs, with a hot-water bottle at his feet and a servant by his side, was gazing out at the world with lack-lustre eyes. Grant obeyed his summons, pushed back the sliding door, and stepped inside.

“So you are here, my young friend,” Cornelius Blunn said weakly. “What does it matter? I am sick in the stomach. I do not think that I shall live till we reach Southampton.”

“Not so bad as that, I hope,” Grant ventured.

“It is worse,” Blunn groaned, “because I am beginning to hope that I shall not. Go away now. I am going to be ill. I wanted to be sure that I was not already seeing ghosts. If this were only your yacht!”

Grant hurried out with a word of sympathy.

“An object lesson in proportionate values,” he reflected, as he walked down the deck,—and then, his little effort at philosophy deserted him. He himself found great events dwarfed by small ones. His heart was pounding against his ribs. He was face to face with Gertrude von Diss!

His first impulse was ludicrously conventional. He hastened to relieve her of the rug she was carrying. Behind her came a maid with coat, pillows, and other impedimenta of travel.

“Gertrude!” he exclaimed, as he stood with the rug upon his arm. “Where have you come from? Where have you been?”

“Stateroom number eighty-four,” she replied, “and I am on my way to that chair, and please don’t ask me whether I have been ill. Come and tuck me up as a well-meaning fellow passenger should.”

He obeyed at once. The maid assisted his efforts, a deck steward supplemented them. Presently Gertrude declared herself comfortable and her entourage faded away. Grant sat by her side.

“I am going to break orders,” he said gently. “I am afraid that you have been ill.”

There were hollows in her cheeks. The freshness of her exquisite complexion had departed. Her eyes seemed to have receded. She was thin and fragile.

“Yes,” she admitted. “I have been ill. A nervous breakdown, accompanied by great weakness of the heart was all that the doctor could find to say about it. I might have helped his diagnosis.”

“Don’t, Gertrude!” he begged.

“My dear man, don’t be afraid that I am going to break into reproaches! There is nothing more illogical in the world than the position of the woman who complains of a man because he doesn’t care for her. It is no sin of yours that you didn’t love me, Grant. It was most certainly no sin of yours that, for a few hours, I made you pretend to. That was entirely my affair,—entirely my cunning scheme, which went wrong. Some idiot once wrote that ‘love begets love!’ I thought that with my arms around your neck I could have brought about a sort of transfusion, forced a little of what was in my heart into yours,—and you see I couldn’t. In the morning I knew. You were very dutiful. Your lips were there for me if I wanted them. Your arms were ready for my body if I had been content to come. You were prepared to take advantage of all the nice and proper little arrangements which the circumstances had placed at my disposal. And of love there was not a scrap. I had made my venture and lost.”

“Gertrude, this is terrible,” he groaned.

“It is terrible because it is the truth,” she continued. “We have that much in common, we two. We both love the truth. I have prayed for this moment, that it might come about just as it has done, that these few plain words might be spoken, and that for the rest of our Uves, we should know!”

“I was a brute,” he muttered. “I tried, Gertrude.”

“W............