“You must not be,” she cried.  “You can escape.  You shall escape.”

“Suppose I refuse to do so?” And he said it confidently.

“Tunis, I have thought of a way out for you,” she cried suddenly.

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“But you must hear it!”

“I will not accept it.”

“You cannot help yourself,” she told him firmly.  “Oh, I know what I am about!  You may be angry; you will perhaps be laughed at a bit.  But to be laughed at is better than to be scorned.”

“What under the sun do you mean, girl?” he exclaimed, both startled and horrified by her determined words.  “Do you think I would desert you in the middle of the current and swim ashore?”

“But I will desert you.  I am determined to desert you.  I refuse to cling to you, a millstone about your neck to drag you down.  Ah, Tunis, whether or not that girl makes her claim good, what you and I had hoped for cannot be!  An explanation must be made of your part in this frightful affair.  That, in itself, must separate you and me.”

“What explanation?  There is no such explanation that can be made.  I glory in the fact that we are together in this, Sheila, and whatever comes of it, we stand or fall together!”

“Ah, Tunis, you are a man!  I knew that before.  But nothing you can say will bend my determination.  I withdraw all I said to you Sunday and on Monday morning before you went away.  I positively withdraw all I promised you.  It cannot be, Tunis.  We cannot look forward to any happiness when we began so unwisely.”

“‘Unwisely?’ What do you mean?” demanded the captain of the Seamew.  “Chance threw us together. Providence, I tell you!  I needed you fully as much as you needed me.  And surely these poor old folks needed you, Sheila.  Consider what you have been to them.”

“It makes no difference in our association, Tunis,” she said, shaking her head.

“Why, that night we talked upon that bench on Boston Common, had I dared propose such a thing, I would have said:  ’Come and marry me now.’  I would, indeed, Sheila.”

The girl clenched her hands and drew in a breath.  She raised her face to his, and in the darkness Tunis Latham saw it shine with a light from within.  A great and desperate longing filled her voice when she cried: 

“Oh, why didn’t you do just that, Tunis Latham?  I would have said ‘yes.’  And all this—­this need not have been.”

Swiftly she caught him around the neck, pressed her lips fiercely to his, while the tears rained down her face, wetting his face as well.  Then she was gone.  He heard her sobbing wildly in the dark.  He was alone.

CHAPTER XXIII

A CALL UNANNOUNCED

Cap’n Ira and Prudence did not see Sheila again that evening, for she slipped in by the kitchen door after they had gone into the sitting room and went up to her own chamber.  They heard her mount the stairs and marked the tread of her light feet overhead.