“My motives I shall not submit to the crucible of your criticism; and a little reflection will probably suggest to you, that perhaps you are unduly enlarging the limits, and prematurely exercising the rights of anticipated censorship.  There are blunders that trench closely upon the borders of crime, and if professional zeal has betrayed you into the commission of a great wrong upon an innocent woman, it is a sacred duty to your victim, as well as my privilege as your betrothed, to alleviate her suffering as much as possible, and to repair the injury for which you are responsible.  When human life and reputation are at stake, hypercritical fastidiousness is less pardonable than the deplorable mistake that endangers both.”

“And if I have not blundered; and she be guilty?”

“Then your presence here, can only be explained by motives so malignant and contemptible, that I blush to ascribe them to you.”

“If I am morbidly sensitive about your line of conduct you should understand and pardon my jealous espionage.”

“If I, realizing that you are act infallible, entertain a nervous dread that unintentionally you may have inflicted an irreparable wrong, you at least should not feel offended, because I am sensitive as regards reflections upon your honor as a gentleman, and your astuteness as a lawyer.”

Her fair face had flushed; his grew pale.

“Leo, is this to be our first quarrel?”

“If so, you are entitled to the role of protagonist.”

He put out his left hand, and took hers, while his right was closely clasping one that lay upon the chintz coverlid.

What strange obliquity of vision, what inscrutable perversity possessed him, he asked himself, as he looked up at the slight elegant figure, clad in costly camel’s-hair garments, with Russian sables wrapped about her delicate throat, with a long drifting plume casting flickering shadows over her sweet flowerlike face; the attractive embodiment of patrician birth and environment of riches, and all that the world values most—­then down at the human epitome of wretchedness, represented by a bronze-crowned head, with singularly magnetic eyes, crimsoned cheeks, and a perfect mouth, whose glowing, fever-rouged lips were curved in a shadowy smile, as she muttered incoherently of incidents, connected with the life of a poverty-stricken adventuress?  Was friendly fate flying danger signals by arranging and accentuating this vivid contrast, in order to recall his vagrant wits, to cement his wavering allegiance?

He was a brave man, but he shivered slightly, as he confronted his own insurgent and defiant heart; and involuntarily, his fingers dropped Leo’s, and his right hand tightened on the hot palm throbbing against it.

On that dark tossing main, where delirium drove Beryl’s consciousness to and fro like a rudderless wreck, did some mysterious communion of spirits survive?  Did some subtle mesmeric current telegraph her soul, that her foul wrongs were at last avenged?  Whatever the cause, certainly a strangely clear, musical laugh broke suddenly from her lovely lips, mingled with a triumphant “Che sara, sara!” The heavy lids slowly drooped, the head turned wearily away.