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charge of yours refuses to unbend. All I’ve wriggled out of her so far are two noes and one yes.”
    “I expect she feels at a disadvantage up there, ” said Lisa, with a warning glance at the child. “Sorry I didn ’ t meet you on deck as we arranged, but it became altogether too rough, and I decided it would be safer to heed the broadcast instructions and keep below.”
    “But it’s grand up there, and I promise that you won ’ t collect a single bruise.” He looked up at Nancy. “ You don’t want to come, do you?”
    “ No,” was the unequivocal reply.
    “Right. Where’s your raincoat, Lisa?”
    She allowed herself to be persuaded. The coat was buttoned to the throat and belted, the hood drawn up and fastened under the chin. A silky tress slipped out, and when they had traversed the corridor and he was preparing to open the after-door against the wind, he tucked it back under her hood with light, sure fingers.
    “Pretty Lee,” he said. “One of these days shall have to kiss you. Will you mind? ”
    “I might. You can’t go around embracing people just when the mood gets you.”
    “I said kiss you, not people. Why didn’t I meet you while I was still in England? I’m sure you’d have made me work harder, and I’d have done more than just worm through the exams. You’re the sort of girl my mother would take to. She’s one of those simple women with a rigid code—a bit too rigid for me!—but you’d measure up all right.”
    He thrust at the narrow after-door and the wind immediately took their breath. Arms locked, they ran with the tip of the ship and arrived at the rail, panting and laughing.
    Except for an elderly man who purposefully marched along the port deck, there was no one about. The seas were still high and the wind swept rain over the deck, so that one could not distinguish if it were rain or spray that stung the face. True to his promise that no harm should come to Lisa, Jeremy kept her clamped close to his side, and he talked of many things.
    Though their friendship was but a day old, Lisa had learned much about Jeremy. He had lost two older brothers in the war, and though they couldn’t really afford it, his parents had financed Jeremy’s education in England because he was the only one left and they could deny him nothing. Their reward was his cable intimating that he had secured his engineering degree; he had fluffed it the previous year and felt terrible at having to take still more money from them.
    “ But it was the only thing to do,” he said now, with the blitheness which was never long absent from his manner. ‘‘To go home a failure was out of the question. I couldn’t have stood it and neither could they. I haven’t told them about the job in Durban. That will tickle them pink, though it still sounds like hell to me.”
    “You’ll settle into it,” she told him. “You must have an engineer’s mind or you couldn’t have got your degree.”
    “You’re as comforting as a woolly scarf on a raw day,” he said. “I can’t imagine why some man hasn’t hooked you into a little cottage to warm his slippers and delight his heart. You’d be adorable to come home to, Lee.”
    S he did not take much notice of Jeremy. The wind and rain were so exhilarating, and the sky had those huge clouds which come up from the south-west in England. Her lips tasted salt and her nose and cheeks were faintly pink, but she was not cold. A glorious warmth had a core in the centre of her being.
    “Jeremy, have you ever seen Astra Carmichael on the stage?” she asked.
    He was not astonished at this turn of the conversation. “Yes, twice, in the same play. She was at the Captain’s table last night.”
    Her smile at him was tinged with curiosity. “You didn’t say.”
    He shrugged. “One always regards actresses as glamorous and unreal. I admired her tremendously in the play, and she’s an unerring producer—but in person such celebrities are disillusioning. She’s not likely