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thought! Not when she had taken such a fancy to Kent Willoughby herself! Surely he understood that the girl was a parson’s daughter?
    ‘I’ve been looking all over the place for you, Mr. Willoughby,’ she said, adopting a coy note, and pretending not to notice that anything was amiss. ‘You know you simply cannot refuse to allow me my revenge tonight... ’
    But Kent Willoughby turned crisply on his heel and walked away. Before he left them he said good night icily, and it was understood that it included both ladies.
    ‘Oh, dear!’ Mrs. Makepiece said. And then she looked at Karin for an explanation. ‘What happened?’

 
    CHAPTER TWO
    The Ariadne steamed steadily on its way, and after Gibraltar the temperature began to climb steadily. There was no longer any gentle warmth, and every breath of air had to be stirred up by fans.
    Round the Cape they sailed, and then into the Indian Ocean. To Karin it was unbelievable, this succession of blue and gold days and wine-dark nights, with so many stars in the sky that she actually tried on more than one occasion to count them. Tom Paget, with whom she made the attempt — and she had long since forgiven him in his clumsy attempt to make a little light love to her, since he had promised he would not repeat the offence (without encouragement from her, that is) — thought it was delightfully childish of her to put her head back as she stood against the rail and solemnly begin to count. One, two, three . ..
    Usually, at this stage, she swayed a little, and he put out his hand to steady her, but she drew back swiftly. She looked at him wa rn ingly, a n d he smiled one-sidedly. They had made a bargain, and he was keeping to it, but the tropical nights were a temptation in themselves, and as for the Indian Ocean ... well, by that time their relationship should have made some progress, he sometimes thought with a feeling of rebellion. If they were ever to get to know one another really well they had to do so this side of Australia, for after that they might never meet again.
    But Karin was not the kind of girl one could get to know easily. Perhaps it was the aura of the vicarage that still clung about her. She was friendly, and there was a certain exciting sweetness about her, as well as an enchanting freshness. By this time Tom was well on the way to being in love with her, but he sometimes thought gloomily and that she didn’t appear to be well on the way to being in love with him.
    He was right, for Karin was not remotely near to falling in love with anyone, although there was one man she had learned to detest more than any other man, and that was Kent Willoughby, who no longer played bridge with Mrs. Makepiece in the evenings.
    Karin knew he would never forgive her for her reaction to the brutal kiss he had given her. Whether or not he actually thought she was the kind of girl who went about encouraging men who barely knew her to press their attentions on her she could only guess, but it seemed to her that he held her in very low esteem. Whenever he passed her — and it was inevitable that he should pass near to her fairly often in each twenty-four hours in such an enclosed space — he not merely failed to acknowledge her, but he actually looked through her. His green, cold eyes were as baleful as glass, and the set of his lips told her what a hard and unrelenting man he was once some antagonism had been aroused in him, or he considered he had a reason to be bitterly offended.
    His place at the captain’s table made it necessary for him to address a few words to her occasionally during meal times, but they were limited to the barest formalities and drawn from him only when politeness or necessity dictated that he should open his lips to her. Although the situation that had arisen was no fault of Mrs. Makepiece’s, he was frigidly curt with her, and she received no better treatment. In bewilderment the widow looked elsewhere for companionship, and found it in an elderly