“To have met you!” childishly.

“Don’t talk like that.  It always makes me less sad than furious.  And how do you know?  If it had been written that you should care for me, would any one else have mattered?  No.  It just is, that’s all.  So we’ll go on as we have done in the past, good friends.  Call me when you need me, and wherever I am I shall come.”

“How pitifully weak I must seem to you!”

“You would be no happier if you wore a mask.  Hildegarde, what has happened?  What power has this adventurer over you?  I can not understand.  He was man enough to say that you were guiltless of any wrong.”

“He said that?” turning upon him sharply.  She could forgive much.

He could not see her face, but by the tone of her voice he knew it had brightened.  “Yes.  I did a freakish thing the night we arrived at the Killigrews’.  I forced him into a corner, but it did not pan out as I hoped.  So far as it touched me, it wasn’t necessary, as I have told you a thousand times.  Your past is nothing to me; your future is everything, and I want it.  God knows how I want it!  Well, I wished to find out what kind of man he is, but I wasn’t very successful.  Hildegarde,” and he pressed his hand down hard over hers, “I could find a priest the day we land if you would love me.  You will always remember that.”

“As if I could ever forget your kindness!  But you forced him; there is no merit in such a confession.  And I wonder how you forced him.  It was not by fear.  Much as I know him there are still some unfilled pages.  I would call him a scoundrel did I not know that in parts he has been a hero.  What sacrifices the man has made, and with what patience!”

“To what end?” quietly.

“No, no, Arthur!  I have promised him.”

He took her by the arm roughly.  “Let us make two or three rounds and go back.  We shan’t grow any more cheerful talking this way.”

“He loves her.  I saw it in his eyes; and I must stand aside and watch!”

“So must I,” he said.  “Aren’t you just a little selfish, Hildegarde?”

“I am wretched, Arthur; and I am a fool, besides.  Oh, that I were cold-blooded like your women, that I could eat out my heart in secret; but I can’t, I can’t!”

“But you have courage; only use it.  If what you say of him is true, rest easy.  She is not in his orbit.  She will not be impressed by an adventurer of his breed.”

“Thank you!” with a broken laugh.  “I am only an opera-singer, here on suffrance.”

“Oh, good Lord!  I did not mean it that way.  Let us finish the walk,” savagely.

On the afternoon of the second day out, tea was served under the awning, and Captain Flanagan condescended to leave his bridge for half an hour.  Through a previous hint dropped by the admiral they lured the captain into spinning yarns; and well-salted hair-breadth escapes they were.  He understood that the admiral’s guests always expected these flights, and he was in nowise niggard.  An ordinary sailor would have been dead these twenty years, under any one of the exploits.