He took both of her hands in his.  “Oh, you lovely, lovely little thing,” he said, and stood looking down at her.

They were the words he had said to her in the music-room.  They revived memories.  Flushing a deeper pink, she drew away from him.  “Why did you come?”

“I could not stay away.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Five days——­”

“Please—­sit down”—­she indicated a chair on the other side of the hearth.  She had seated herself in the Admiral’s winged chair.  It came up over her head, and she looked very slight and childish.

George, surveying the room, said, “This is some contrast to Huntersfield.”

“Yes.”

“Do you like it?”

“Oh, yes.  I have spent months here, you know, and Sally, who whistles out there in the yard, is an old friend of mine.  I played with her as a child.”

“I should think the Admiral would rather have one of those big houses on the bluff.”

“Would you?”

“Yes.”

“But he has so many big houses.  And this is his play-house.  It belonged to his grandfather, and that ship up there is one on which our Sally was the figure-head.”

He forced himself to listen while she told him something of the history of the old ship.  He knew that she was making conversation, that there were things more important to speak of, and that she knew it.  Yet she was putting off the moment when they must speak.

There came a pause, however.  “And now,” he said, leaning forward, “let’s talk about ourselves, I have been here five days, Becky—­waiting——­”

“Waiting?  For what?”

“To ask you to—­forgive me.”

Her steady glance met his.  “If I say that I forgive you, will that be—­enough?”

“You know it will not,” his sparkling eyes challenged her.  “Not if you say it coldly——­”

“How else can I say it?”

“As if—­oh, Becky, don’t keep me at long distance—­like this.  Don’t tell me that you are engaged to Randy Paine.  Don’t——.  Let this be our day——­” He seemed to shine and sparkle in a perfect blaze of gallantry.

“I am not engaged to Randy.”

He gave an exclamation of triumph.  “You broke it off?”

“No,” she said, “he broke it.”

“What?”

She folded her hands in her lap.  “You see,” she said, “he felt that I did not love him.  And he would not take me that way—­unloving.”

“He seemed to want to take you any way, the day he talked to me.  I asked him what he had to offer you——­” He gave a light laugh—­seemed to brush Randy away with a gesture.

Her cheeks flamed.  “He has a great deal to offer.”

“For example?” lazily, with a lift of the eyebrows.

“He is a gentleman—­and a genius——­”

His face darkened.  “I’ll pass over the first part of that until later.  But why call him a ’genius’?”

“He has written a story,” breathlessly, “oh, all the world will know it soon.  The people who have read it, in New York, are crazy about it——­”