“Pardon my not rising, my Captain,” begged Mlle. Nadiboff, as Jack Benson left his friends to go forward and greet her.  “I find I have not my full strength yet.”

Since she offered her hand, Jack, under the circumstances, took it simply, then released it.  He stood before her in the uniform that had suffered in the fire.

“I am told that you, my Captain, nearly lost your own life in saving my less than worthless one,” continued the Russian woman.  “It was a strange thing for you to—­considering.  Will you believe me when I tell you that I greatly respect your courage and your manhood?”

“Yes,” bowed Jack.  “Though it was nothing but a sailor’s easy trick.”

“You would make little of it, would you, my Captain?” smiled Mlle. Nadiboff, plaintively.  “True, you risked much for a life that has been worth but little.  Still, I sent for you to do more than assure you of my appreciation of your generosity.”

As she spoke, the young woman thrust one hand into the bosom of her dress.  She drew out a little envelope which she held in her hand for a few moments.

“You have been threatened, my Captain?” she whispered, looking up at him.

“Oh, ye-es,” assented Captain Jack Benson, shrugging his shoulders.

“And by very desperate people.”

“So far,” smiled the boy, “they have injured only themselves.”

“Yet you do not know how far their vengeance can reach.”

“Nor shall I lose any sleep thinking over it,” Captain Jack replied, looking down at her with his baffling smile.

“Your enemies had one trick prepared for you,” whispered the Russian, “that you might have found it hard to meet.”

“Yes?”

“Of course you do not suspect it, but we have even one of the waiters here—­a worthless, reckless black—­in our pay.”

“It may have been he who thrust the paper under our door before—­before the fire?” ventured Jack.

“It was,” nodded Mlle. Nadiboff, seriously.  “And it was the same waiter who, on receiving this envelope from me, would have mixed the contents with the next cup of coffee served you in the dining room of this hotel.  But I am overcome by your generosity, my Captain.  Take this envelope—­and do not place what it contains in your coffee.”

Though Jack Benson may have started inwardly, his hand did not tremble in the least as he reached out and took the envelope, which he dropped into one of his pockets.

“Thank you, Mademoiselle,” he said, simply.

“There is nothing about me, my Captain, that you can admire,” spoke the Russian woman, sadly.  “I have not led the right kind of life.  But I have just that grain of good in me that enables me to admire one as fine and manly as I have found you to be.  You have given me my life—­a worthless one, at best.  So I give you your life—­and may you make as splendid use of it as you have started out to do.  And now, good-bye, my Captain.  You cannot continue to know such as I.”