“What’s the trouble?” he said, offended.  “Startled you?  Look here:  don’t let us have any of that nonsense.  You don’t mean to say a kiss frightens you so much as all that. . . .  I know better. . . .  I don’t mean to be left out in the cold.”

He had been gazing into her face with such strained intentness that he could no longer see it distinctly.  Everything round him was rather misty.  He forgot the overturned stool, caught his foot against it, and lurched forward slightly, saying in an ingratiating tone: 

“I’m not bad fun, really.  You try a few kisses to begin with—­”

He said no more, because his head received a terrific concussion, accompanied by an explosive sound.  Freya had swung her round, strong arm with such force that the impact of her open palm on his flat cheek turned him half round.  Uttering a faint, hoarse yell, the lieutenant clapped both his hands to the left side of his face, which had taken on suddenly a dusky brick-red tinge.  Freya, very erect, her violet eyes darkened, her palm still tingling from the blow, a sort of restrained determined smile showing a tiny gleam of her white teeth, heard her father’s rapid, heavy tread on the path below the verandah.  Her expression lost its pugnacity and became sincerely concerned.  She was sorry for her father.  She stooped quickly to pick up the music-stool, as if anxious to obliterate the traces. . . .  But that was no good.  She had resumed her attitude, one hand resting lightly on the piano, before old Nelson got up to the top of the stairs.

Poor father!  How furious he will be—­how upset!  And afterwards, what tremors, what unhappiness!  Why had she not been open with him from the first?  His round, innocent stare of amazement cut her to the quick.  But he was not looking at her.  His stare was directed to Heemskirk, who, with his back to him and with his hands still up to his face, was hissing curses through his teeth, and (she saw him in profile) glaring at her balefully with one black, evil eye.

“What’s the matter?” asked old Nelson, very much bewildered.

She did not answer him.  She thought of Jasper on the deck of the brig, gazing up at the lighted bungalow, and she felt frightened.  It was a mercy that one of them at least was on board out of the way.  She only wished he were a hundred miles off.  And yet she was not certain that she did.  Had Jasper been mysteriously moved that moment to reappear on the verandah she would have thrown her consistency, her firmness, her self-possession, to the winds, and flown into his arms.

“What is it?  What is it?” insisted the unsuspecting Nelson, getting quite excited.  “Only this minute you were playing a tune, and—­”

Freya, unable to speak in her apprehension of what was coming (she was also fascinated by that black, evil, glaring eye), only nodded slightly at the lieutenant, as much as to say:  “Just look at him!”