“J’ai honte,” she said; “je ne bougerai pas plus tot que vous.”

The breath of the fierce flames scorched her cheek as she spoke, the wind of their roaring progress swept her hair.  He lifted her over without further consultation, and still kept her in his care.

There was a strange atmosphere on board the little vessels, as they labored about and parted from the doomed Osprey.  Many were subdued with awe and joy at their deliverance; others broke the tense strain of the last hours in suffocating sobs.  Every throb of the panting engines they answered with waiting heart-beats, as it sent them farther from the fearful wonder, now blazing in multiplex lines of fire against the gray horizon.  Mr. Raleigh gazed after it as one watches the conflagration of a home.  Marguerite left her quiet weeping to gaze with him.  An hour silently passed, and as the fiery phantom faded into dawn and distance she sang sweetly the first few lines of an old French hymn.  Another voice took up the measure, stronger and clearer; those who knew nothing of the words caught the spirit of the tune; and no choral service ever pealed up temple-vaults with more earnest accord than that in which this chant of grateful, exultant devotion now rose from rough-throated men and weary women in the crisp air and yellowing spring-morning.

As the moment of parting approached, Marguerite stood with folded hands before Mr. Raleigh, looking sadly down the harbor.

“I regret all that,” she said,—­“these days that seem years.”

“An equivocal phrase,” he replied, with a smile.

“But you know what I mean.  I am going to strangers; I have been with you.  I shall find no one so kind to me as you have been, Monsieur.”

“Your strangers can be much kinder to you than I have been.”

“Never!  I wish they did not exist!  What do I care for them?  What do they care for me?  They do not know me; I shall shock them.  I miss you, I hate them, already. Non!  Personne ne m’aime, et je n’aime personne!” she exclaimed, with low-toned vehemence.

“Rite,” began Mr. Raleigh.

“Rite!  No one but my mother ever called me that.  How did you know it?”

“I have met your mother, and I knew you a great many years ago.”

“Mr. Raleigh!” And there was the least possible shade of unconscious regret in the voice before it added,—­“And what was I?”

“You were some little wood-spirit, the imp of a fallen cone, mayhap, or the embodiment of birch-tree shadows.  You were a soiled and naughty little beauty, not so different from your present self, and who kissed me on the lips.”  “And did you refuse to take the kiss?”

He laughed.

“You were a child then,” he said.  “And I was not”——­

“Was not?”——­

Here the boat swung round at her moorings, and the shock prevented Mr. Raleigh’s finishing his sentence.

“Ursule is with us, or on the other one?” she asked.