"
She frowned at him. Then the smell of the stuff in the tumbler was
wafted to her. The green baize door came before her, almost tangible,
and the book-room as it was the night her father died, when last she had
smelt whisky as she and Wullie knelt on the floor beside him.
"Here, take it," she cried, starting up wildly. "Take it away! I'd die
if I drank it."
"What in hell--" began the man, staring after her.
But she was already down the companion-way and rushing towards her
cabin. All the misery of her father's death and illness had swept back
upon her. It was quite true, as Aunt Janet had said, that nothing would
kill that pain until she had schooled herself not to feel. She felt the
literal, physical weight of all that misery as she ran along the
alley-way, her eyes swimming, her face flushed.
Her cabin--Number 9--being the one with the porthole, was at the end of
the alley-way. The door of Number 8 was open into the passage, but she
was too blinded by her emotion to notice it, and blundered into it. It
was badly swung, and slammed inwards. She heard a smash inside the
cabin, and someone said "Damn!" It was exactly the same "Damn" that had
resulted from her headlong flight after Dr. Angus.
She was standing a little breathless by her own door when Number 8
opened and Louis Farne looked out.
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