Sara Lee stood in the shadows and listened. There were voices overhead,

from the bridge. A door opened onto the deck and threw out a ray of

light. Some one came out and went on shore, walking with brisk ringing

steps. And then at last she put down her bag and tried door after door,

without result.

The man who had gone ashore called another. The gangway was drawn in.

The engines began to vibrate under foot. Sara Lee, breathless and

terrified, stood close to a cabin door and remained immovable. At one

moment it seemed as if a seaman was coming forward to where she stood.

But he did not come.

The Calais boat was waiting until the other steamer had got well out of

the harbor. The fog had lifted, and the searchlight was moving over

the surface. It played round the channel steamer without touching it.

But none of this was visible to Sara Lee.

At last the lights of the quay began to recede. The little boat rocked

slightly in its own waves as it edged away. It moved slowly through

the shipping and out until, catching the swell of the channel, it shot

ahead at top speed.

For an hour Sara Lee stood there. The channel wind caught her and tore

at her skirts until she was almost frozen. And finally, in sheer

desperation, she worked her way round to the other side. She saw no

one. Save for the beating heart of the engine below it might have been

a dead ship.

On the other side she found an open door and stumbled into the tiny dark

deck cabin, as chilled and frightened a philanthropist as had ever

crossed that old and tricky and soured bit of seaway. And there, to be

frank, she forgot her fright in as bitter a tribute of seasickness as

even the channel has ever exacted.

She had locked herself in, and she fell at last into an exhausted sleep.

When she wakened and peered out through the tiny window it was gray

winter dawn. The boat was quiet, and before her lay the quay of Calais

and the Gare Maritime. A gangway was out and a hurried survey showed

no one in sight.

Sara Lee picked up her suitcase and opened the door. The fresh morning

air revived her, but nevertheless it was an extremely pale young woman

who, obeying Henri's instructions, went ashore that morning in the gray

dawn unseen, undisturbed and unquestioned. But from the moment she

appeared on the gangway until the double glass doors of the Gare

Maritime closed behind her this apparently calm young woman did not

breathe at all. She arrived, indeed, with lungs fairly collapsed and

her heart entirely unreliable.




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