“Excuse me a moment,” said Mr. Raleigh, following him, and, meeting Captain Tarbell at the companion-way, the three descended together.

Mr. Raleigh was absent some fifteen minutes, at the end of that time rejoining Mademoiselle Le Blanc.

“I did not mean to make fun of you,” said he, resuming the conversation as if there had been no interruption.  “I was watching the foam the Osprey makes in her speed, which certainly burns blue.  See the flashing sparks! now that all the red fades from the west, they glow in the moon like broken amethysts.”

“What did you mean, then?” she asked, pettishly.

“Oh, I wished to see if the idea of a burning ship was so terrifying.”

“Terrifying?  No; I have no fear; I never was afraid.  But it must, in reality, be dreadful.  I cannot think of anything else so appalling.”

“Not at all timid?”

“Mamma used to say, those that know nothing fear nothing.”

“Eminently your case.  Then you cannot imagine a situation in which you would lose self-possession?”

“Scarcely.  Isn’t it people of the finest organization, comprehensive, large-souled, that are capable of the extremes either of courage or fear?  Now I am limited, so that, without rash daring or pale panic, I can generally preserve equilibrium.”

“How do you know all this of yourself?” he asked, with an amused air.

“Il se presentait des occasions,” she replied, briefly.

“So I presumed,” said he.  “Ah?  They have thrown out the log.  See, we make progress.  If this breeze holds!”

“You are impatient, Mr. Raleigh.  You have dear friends at home, whom you wish to see, who wish to see you?”

“No,” he replied, with a certain bitterness in his tone.  “There is no one to whom I hasten, no one who waits to receive me.”

“No one?  But that is terrible!  Then why should you wish to hasten?  For me, I would always be willing to loiter along, to postpone home indefinitely.”

“That is very generous, Mademoiselle.”

“Mr. Raleigh”—­

“Well?”

“I wish—­please—­you must not say Mademoiselle.  Nobody will address me so, shortly.  Give me my name,—­call me Marguerite. Je vous en prie.”

And she looked up with a blush deepening the apple-bloom of her cheek.

“Marguerite?  Does it answer for pearl or for daisy with you?”

“Oh, they called me so because I was such a little round white baby.  I couldn’t have been very precious, though, or she never would have parted with me.  Yes, I wish we might drift on some lazy current for years.  I hate to shorten the distance.  I stand in awe of my father, and I do not remember my mother.”

“Do not remember?”

“She is so perfect, so superb, so different from me!  But she ought to love her own child!”

“Her own child?”

“And then I do not know the customs of this strange land.  Shall I be obliged to keep an establishment?”