She was dazed, I think.  She made no effort to free her arm, but she put her other hand to her heart unexpectedly, and I saw that she was profoundly shocked.  I led her, unprotesting, to a deck-chair, and put her down in it; and still she had not spoken:  She lay back and closed her eyes.  She was too strong to faint; she was superbly healthy.  But she knew as well as I did what that key meant, and she had delivered it into my hands.  As for me, I was driven hard that night; for, as I stood there looking down at her, she held out her hand to me, palm up.

“Please!” she said pleadingly.  “What does it mean to you, Leslie?  We were kind to you, weren’t we?  When you were ill, we took you on, my sister and I, and now you hate us.”

“Hate you!”

“He didn’t know what he was doing.  He wasn’t sane.  No sane man kills—­that way.  He had a revolver, if he had wanted—­Please give me that key!”

“Some one will suffer.  Would you have the innocent suffer with the guilty?”

“If they cannot prove it against any one—­”

“They may prove it against me.”

“You!”

“I was in the after house,” I said doggedly.  “I was the one to raise an alarm and to find the bodies.  You do not know anything about me.  I am—­’Elsa’s jail-bird’!”

“Who told you that?”

“It does not matter—­I know it.  I told you the truth, Miss Elsa;
I came here from the hospital.  But I may have to fight for my life. 
Against the Turner money and influence, I have only—­this key. 
Shall I give it to you?”

I held it out to her on the palm of my hand.  It was melodramatic, probably; but I was very young, and by that time wildly in love with her.  I thought, for a moment, that she would take it; but she only drew a deep breath and pushed my hand away.

“Keep it,” she said.  “I am ashamed.”

We were silent after that, she staring out over the rail at the deepening sky; and, looking at her as one looks at a star, I thought she had forgotten my presence, so long she sat silent.  The voices of the men aft died away gradually, as, one by one, they rolled themselves in blankets on the deck, not to sleep, but to rest and watch.  The lookout, in his lonely perch high above the deck, called down guardedly to ask for company, and one of the crew went up.

When she turned to me again, it was to find my eyes fixed on her.

“You say you have neither money nor influence.  And yet, you are a gentleman.”

“I hope so.”

“You know what I mean”—­impatiently.  “You are not a common sailor.”

“I did not claim to be one.”

“You are quite determined we shall not know anything about you?”

“There is nothing to know.  I have given you my name, which is practically all I own in the world.  I needed a chance to recover from an illness, and I was obliged to work.  This offered the best opportunity to combine both.”