in sweet helplessness, her rich hair streaming over David’s shoulder, her eyes closed, but the long, lovely lashes meeting so that the double fringe was as speaking as most eyes, and her lips half open in an innocent smile.  The storm was no storm to her now.  She slept the sleep of childhood, of innocence and peace; and David gazed and gazed on her, and joy and tenderness almost more than human thrilled through him, and the storm was no storm to him either; he forgot the past, despised the future, and in the delirium of his joy blessed the sea and the wind, and wished for nothing but, instead of the Channel, a boundless ocean, and to sail upon it thus, her bosom tenderly grazing him, and her lovely head resting on his shoulder, for ever, and ever, and ever.

Thus they sailed on two hours and more, and Jack now began to nod.

All of a sudden Lucy awoke, and, opening her eyes, surprised David gazing at her with tenderness unspeakable.  Awaking possessed with the notion that she was sleeping at home on a bed of down, she looked dumfounded an instant; but David’s eyes soon sent the blood into her cheek.  Her whole supple person turned eel-like, and she glided quickly, but not the least bruskly, from him; the latter might have seemed discourteous.

“Oh, Mr. Dodd,” she cried, “what am I doing?”

“You have been getting a nice sleep, thank Heaven.”

“Yes, and making use of you even in my sleep; but we all impose on your goodness.”

“Why did you awake?  You were happy; you felt no care, and I was happy seeing you so.”

Lucy’s eyes filled.  “Kind, true friend,” she murmured, “how can I ever thank you as I ought?  I little deserved that you should watch over my safety as you have done, and, alas! risk your own.  Any other but you would have borne me malice, and let me perish, and said, ’It serves her right.’”

“Malice!  Miss Lucy.  What for, in Heaven’s name?”

“For—­for the affront I put upon you; for the—­the honor I declined.”

“Hate cannot lie alongside love in a true heart.”

“I see it cannot in a noble one.  And then you are so generous.  You have never once recurred to that unfortunate topic; yet you have gained a right to request me—­to reconsider—­Mr. Dodd, you have saved my life!!”

“What! do you praise me because I don’t take a mean advantage?  That would not be behaving like a man.”

“I don’t know that.  You overrate your sex—­and mine.  We don’t deserve such generosity.  The proof is, we reward those who are not so—­delicate.”

“I don’t trouble my head about your sex.  They are nothing to me, and never will be.  If you think I have done my duty like a man, and as much like a gentleman as my homely education permits, that is enough for me, and I shall sail for China as happy as anything on earth can make me now.”

Lucy answered this by crying gently, silently, tenderly.

“Don’t ye cry.  Have I said something to vex you?”