Free Unknown by Unknown

play.” Purposely she spoke slowly, deliberately, so that he had time to realise that every word she said was important. “There’s so much more room in a book than there is in a play, isn’t there, because there isn’t the same time limit And when I real ‘Guessing Game’ again. I discovered that what they’d done was just to use the bones of the plot, highlighting the essential points. But, to me, what they had left out was what made the book live,” she explained earnestly.
    “Do you mean you think that I—” he began slowly, and stopped short.
    “It’s cheek of me to suggest it, seeing that I don’t know a thing about it,” she said diffidently. “But do you think perhaps it’s possible that really it’s a book, not a play, that you’ve got in your mind?”
    It was so long before he answered that Rosamund was convinced that he thought she was not only cheeky but stupid.
    Suddenly he stood up and pulled her to her feet. For a moment they stood face to face, their hands still linked. Then he bent his tall head and very gently kissed her on her soft pink mouth.
    “Bless you, Rosamund!” he said huskily, and without another word, turned and strode into the day cabin.
    Rosamund watched him go, her fingers gently touching the lips he had just kissed. Then, feeling as if it must all be a dream, she took the coffee cups into the galley and cleared up the debris of their meal. When everything was done to her satisfaction, she went out on deck again and tiptoed to the door of the day cabin. She need not have been cautious. John was far beyond the state where extraneous noises could disturb him. Already he had reduced his scattered manuscript to a neat pile, and with occasional references to it, he was writing, writing, writing as if his life depended on it.
    Perhaps it did, Rosamund thought—that creative part of him which, denied, would mean that he wouldn’t be able to live his life to the full. And that, she thought passionately, was what she wanted most for him—fulfilment and, wonder of wonders, she had already played a part, however small, in helping him to achieve that.
    Contentment filled her—a contentment of a sort so deep rooted that, inexperienced as she was where men were concerned, she knew instinctively could mean only one thing. She loved John. And she always would.
    *
    “No, no luck at all,” Dr. Rob confirmed glumly. “Not even though you were able to let me know the date of her birth. How did you manage to get that, by the way? You didn’t ask her outright, did you?”
    “No, you asked me not to, so I resorted to devious means. You know, Rob,” she added wryly, “I’m getting all too good at that sort of thing! I think I must have a naturally criminal mind.”
    “Most women have,” Dr. Rob told her matter-of-factly. “They’re convinced that the means are justified by the end—if it benefits someone near and dear to them.”
    And to whom did that refer? Miss Alice wondered. To Rosamund or to himself? She had no intention of asking.
    “Well, be that as it may, I needed to make an application for a new passport and I took care to fill in the form in front of Rosamund. I made some stupid remark about my age—that when one gets to a certain age one ought to be excused from revealing it and that I did my best to forget my birthdays now. Then I said something about that not being the case where she was concerned and wondered if her birthday was sufficiently near at hand for us to have a party. And she told me when it was. July the twenty-third, as I told you.”
    “There was no hesitation in telling you?” Dr. Rob asked quickly.
    “None whatever. But later on, after I’d rung you up to give you the date, she told me something that I found very interesting. She’s never had a passport, Rob. Never been out of the country, in fact.”
    “In other words, has had no need to produce her birth certificate on that account," Dr. Rob said reflectively.
    “Or, I think, on any