“How unkind you are!  It is not as if I was under no obligations to you.  Is not my life worth a ship? an angel like me?”

“I can’t see it so.  It was a greater pleasure to me to save your life, as you call it, than it could be to you.  I can’t let that into the account.  A woman is a woman, but a man is a man; and I will be under no obligation to you but one.”

“What arrogance!”

“Don’t you be angry; I’ll love you and bless you all the same.  But I am a man, and a man I’ll die, whether I die captain of a ship or of a foretop.  Poor Eve!”

“See how power tries people, and brings out their true character.  Since you commanded the Rajah you are all changed.  You used to be submissive; now you must have your own way entirely.  You will fling my poor ship in my face unless I give you—­but this is really using force—­yes, Mr. Dodd, this is using force.  Somebody has told you that my sex yield when downright compulsion is used.  It is true; and the more ungenerous to apply it;” and she melted into a few placid tears.

David did not know this sign of yielding in a woman, and he groaned at the sight and hung his head.

“Advise me what I had better do.”

To this singular proposal, David, listening to the ill advice of the fiend Generosity, groaned out, “Why should you be tormented and made cry?”

“Why indeed?”

“Nothing can change me; I advise you to cut it short.”

“Oh, do you? very well.  Why did you say ’poor Eve’?”

“Ah, poor thing! she cried for joy when she read your letter, but when I go back she will cry for grief;” and his voice faltered.

“I will cut this short, Mr. Dodd; give me that paper.”

“Which?”

“The wicked one, where you refuse my Rajah.”

David hesitated.

“You are no gentleman, sir, if you refuse a lady.  Give it me this instant,” cried Lucy, so haughtily and imperiously that David did not know her, and gave her the letter with a half-cowed air.

She took it, and with both her supple white hands tore it with insulting precision exactly in half.  “There, sir and there, sir” (exactly in four); “and there” (in eight, with malicious. exactness); “and there”; and, though it seemed impossible to effect another separation, yet the taper fingers and a resolute will reduced it to tiny bits.  She then made a gesture to throw them in the fire, but thought better of it and held them.

David looked on, almost amused at this zealous demolition of a thing he could so easily replace.  He said, part sadly, part doggedly, part apologetically, “I can write another.”

“But you will not.  Oh, Mr. Dodd, don’t you see?!”

He looked up at her eagerly.  To his surprise, her haughty eagle look had gone, and she seemed a pitying goddess, all tenderness and benignity; only her mantling, burning cheek showed her to be woman.