He waited—­uselessly as he had foretold.  She said nothing, and if the glance he felt upon him was of inquiry he did not look about to meet it.  He was still staring a saturnine Pasht out of countenance.  There was a pause.

Then, “However were you able to think of it all?” said Arlee in slow wonder.  “However were you able to think such an impossible thought as my imprisonment?”

“Because I was thinking about you,” said Billy.  Suddenly his tongue ran away with him.  “Incessantly,” he added.

She looked up at him.  Unguardedly he looked down at her.  No one but a blind girl or a goose could have mistaken that look upon Billy B. Hill’s young face, the frustrate longing of it, the deep desire.  The heart beneath the sky-blue cloak cast off a most monstrous accumulation of doubts and fears and began suddenly to beat like mad.

Totally unexpectedly, startlingly amazing, she flung out at him, “Then what made you stop?”

“Stop?” he echoed.  “Stop?  I’ve never stopped!  There hasn’t been a moment——­”

“There have been three days.  Three—­horrible—­days!”

“Arlee!”

“Do you think I like being snubbed and ignored and—­and—­obliterated?” she brought indignantly out.  “Do you think I call that—­being friends?”

“I—­I wanted to leave you free—­not to force your friendship——­” he stammered wildly.

“You couldn’t force mine,” said Arlee Beecher.

“But—­but there was Falconer,” he protested.  “You had to be free to—­to have a choice——­”

“A choice?  Do you call that a choice?”

“I thought you were making it.  That first night——­”

“I stayed up to dance with you,” she cried hotly.  “You never came back!”

“But the next day——­”

“I wanted to go.  But I couldn’t keep up any more.  I had to rest....  And you went with Lady Claire!”

“Why, I had to!  We’d planned.  But when we came back, he was on deck with you——­”

“Yes, and I was waiting up—­to see you.  And you only took two dances that night——­”

“You didn’t seem to want me to——­”

“I never guessed you wanted them! I had my pride, too.  I wasn’t going to be in the way—­because you’d rescued me.  I thought you didn’t want me in the way!”

“Arlee—­my girl—­my precious girl——­”

“No, I’m not.  I’m not.”

“Yes, you are,” he said fiercely.  “I don’t care if you are engaged to Falconer or not, I’m going to tell you so.”

“I’m not engaged to Falconer,” she protested.

He blurted in bewilderment.  “Then what in the world were you doing up there on that pylon?”

Her elfish laughter disconcerted him.  “Do you think one has to get engaged if she stays on a pylon?...  We were getting not engaged.”

“I thought—­I thought you liked him,” he said bewilderedly.