He shook hands with her exactly as he had written to her, and she shook hands with him just as she had telegraphed to him.  Much of her natural color had left her face.  As he had never seen this natural color, under the sun-brown of the Pacific voyage, he did not miss it.

Instantly she began to speak.  How glad she was that she had prepared herself to speak as she would have spoken to any other good friend!  So she expressed her joy at seeing him again, well and successful after all these months of peril, toil, and anxiety, and they sat down near each other.

He looked at her steadfastly, and asked her many things about Ralph, Mrs. Cliff, and the negroes, and what had happened since he left San Francisco.  He listened with a questioning intentness as she spoke.  She spoke rapidly and concisely as she answered his questions and asked him about himself.  She said little about the gold.  One might have supposed that he had arrived at Marseilles with a cargo of coffee.  At the same time, there seemed to be, on Edna’s part, a desire to lengthen out her recital of unimportant matters.  She now saw that the captain knew she did not care to talk of these things.  She knew that he was waiting for an opportunity to turn the conversation into another channel,—­waiting with an earnestness that was growing more and more apparent,—­and as she perceived this, and as she steadily talked to him, she assured herself, with all the vehemence of which her nature was capable, that she and this man were two people connected by business interests, and that she was ready to discuss that business in a business way as soon as he could speak.  But still she did not yet give him the chance to speak.

The captain sat there, with his blue eyes fixed upon her, and, as she looked at him, she knew him to be the personification of honor and magnanimity, waiting until he could see that she was ready for him to speak, ready to listen if she should speak, ready to meet her on any ground—­a gentleman, she thought, above all the gentlemen in the world.  And still she went on talking about Mrs. Cliff and Ralph.

Suddenly the captain rose.  Whether or not he interrupted her in the middle of a sentence, he did not know, nor did she know.  He put his hat upon a table and came toward her.  He stood in front of her and looked down at her.  She looked up at him, but he did not immediately speak.  She could not help standing silently and looking up at him when he stood and looked down upon her in that way.  Then he spoke.

“Are you my wife?” said he.

“By all that is good and blessed in heaven or earth, I am,” she answered.

Standing there, and looking up into his eyes, there was no other answer for her to make.

* * * * *

Seldom has a poor, worn, tired, agitated woman kept what was to her a longer or more anxious watch upon a closed door than Mrs. Cliff kept that day.  If even Ralph had appeared, she would have decoyed him into her own room, and locked him up there, if necessary.