She was lying on her back on a cot, staring at the ceiling. Her face was pale, but it always was, and her green eyes were no more sullen than usual. Except that her short hair was dark with dampness she didn’t look as if anything out of the ordinary had happened.
“You think of the funniest things to do,” I said when I was beside the bed.
She jumped and her face jerked around to me, startled. Then she recognized me and smiled—a smile that brought into her face the attractiveness that habitual sullenness kept out.
“You have to keep in practice—sneaking up on people?” she asked. “Who told you I was here?”
“Everybody knows it. Your pictures are all over the front pages of the newspapers, with your life history and what you said to the Prince of Wales.”
She stopped smiling and looked steadily at me.
“I got it!” she exclaimed after a few seconds. “That runt who came in after me was one of your ops—tailing me. Wasn’t he?”
“I didn’t know anybody had to go in after you,” I answered. “I thought you came ashore after you had finished your swim. Didn’t you want to land?”
She wouldn’t smile. Her eyes began to look at something horrible.
“Oh! Why didn’t they let me alone?” she wailed, shuddering. “It’s a rotten thing, living.”
I sat down on a small chair beside the white bed and patted the lump her shoulder made in the sheets.