How did you get amongst
this lot here?"
"Bad luck," she answered briefly.
"No doubt, no doubt," Heyst assented with slight nods. Then, still
indignant at the pinch which he had divined rather than actually seen
inflicted: "I say, couldn't you defend yourself somehow?"
She had risen already. The ladies of the orchestra were slowly regaining
their places. Some were already seated, idle stony-eyed, before the
music-stands. Heyst was standing up, too.
"They are too many for me," she said.
These few words came out of the common experience of mankind; yet by
virtue of her voice, they thrilled Heyst like a revelation. His feelings
were in a state of confusion, but his mind was clear.
"That's bad. But it isn't actual ill-usage that this girl is complaining
of," he thought lucidly after she left him.
CHAPTER TWO
That was how it began. How it was that it ended, as we know it did end,
is not so easy to state precisely. It is very clear that Heyst was not
indifferent, I won't say to the girl, but to the girl's fate. He was
the same man who had plunged after the submerged Morrison whom he
hardly knew otherwise than by sight and through the usual gossip of the
islands. But this was another sort of plunge altogether, and likely to
lead to a very different kind of partnership.
Did he reflect at all? Probably.
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