“I unearthed two great cakes of chocolate last night,” she said, “and as I was simply dying for some candy I made fudge while preparing breakfast.  I had to use condensed milk, watered; and as there was no marble slab I had to stir it in the pan.  I don’t know how good it is; it’s awfully grainy”; and thus, rattling on, she took a square of the confection and placed it gingerly between her lips.

“Why, it’s not so bad,” she said.  “Here!  Open your mouth and shut your eyes!” Which Dan did, declaring that he had never eaten anything half so delicious.

“Really!” she exclaimed, with falling inflection.  “Then I must say I feel sorry for you. . . .  Now, why have you that little amused twinkle in your eyes?  I used to see it sometimes at the table on the Tampico when Reggie was boasting, and—­and sometimes when I was trying to be very brilliant.  Do you know, sometimes I felt like boxing your ears, you seemed so superior.”

“It was not superiority in your case,” laughed Dan, “it was appreciation.”

“Thank you,” said Virginia; “and now?”

“Oh,” smiled Dan, “the thought of fudge on a derelict was and is responsible for this twinkle.”

“I don’t care,” she frowned.  “It is the person that rises superior to conditions who triumphs in this world.  Anyway, you seem to be disposing of your share, despite your notions of incongruity.”

“Have you thought,” said Dan, “that it might pay to be very economical with your chocolate?  If we stay here two or three months and all our food runs out we can live on ever so little chocolate each day.”

“Two or three months!” echoed Virginia.  “Now, you are tactful, aren’t you?  And just as I was sitting here chattering away, with no thought that we were not on a yacht ready to turn home the minute I wished to!”

Dan smiled.

“If we were on a yacht, how soon would you—­wish to?” he said.

The girl met his eyes undauntedly.

“If I answered you in one way I should not be at all polite,” she said; “and if in another, I should not be—­be—­”

“Honest?” suggested Dan.

“That would depend upon what I said,” she answered with a non-committal shrug.  “Now I am going.  I’ve a lot to do in my cabin, and a luncheon menu to make out. Au revoir!” She paused at the entrance to the cabins, smiled brightly at Dan, and then disappeared.

Long he sat, gazing out over the serene waters, filled with a great inward thrill.  The wonder of all the fast-crowding events of the past fortnight was asserting itself potently in his mind, and it was difficult to realize he was not now living some wild, improbable dream.  But, after all, he found the sense of responsibility dominant.  To his care was committed a beautiful life,—­a life that must be saved, cherished, and ultimately restored to its proper environment.  Of late, it seemed, an evil star had pursued him; everything he had commanded or had anything to do with had either sunk or burned—­an extraordinary train of misfortune not lacking in the lives of many able masters of craft.  What next?  He passed over that thought with a frown.  He was living in a beautiful present; the future would be met as the past had been, bravely and with no cry for quarter.