“I’m sorry to have to remind you,” she broke in, freezingly, “that I asked you not to speak to me.  Surely you can have at least that much chivalry,—­when I am helpless to get out of hearing from you.  You say you are willing to confront my brother with, this—­this—­ridiculous charge.  Very well.  Till then, I hope you won’t—­”

“All right,” he said, gloomily.  “And I don’t blame you.  I’m a bungler, when it comes to saying things to women.  I don’t know so very much about them.  I’ve read that no man really understands women.  And certainly I don’t.  By the way, the boat’s run opposite that spit of beach at the bottom of your mangrove swamp.  If you’re in a hurry, you can land there, and we can go to the house by way of the hidden path.  It will cut off a mile or so.  You have a flashlight.  So—­”

He let his voice trail away, frozen to silence by the rigidly hostile little figure outlined at the other end of the boat by the tumble of phosphorus in their wake.

Claire roused herself, from a gloomy reverie, enough to shift the course of the craft and to head it for the dim-seen sandspit that was backed by the ebony darkness of the mangrove swamp.

Neither of them spoke again, until, with a swishing sound and a soft grate of the light-draught boat, the keel clove its way into the offshore sand and the craft came to coughing halt twenty feet from land.

Claire roused herself, from a gloomy reverie in which she had fallen.  Subconsciously, she had accepted the man’s suggestion that they take the short cut.  And she had steered thither, forgetful that there was no dock and no suitable landing place for even so light a boat anywhere along the patch of sandy foreshore.

Now, fast aground, she saw her absent-minded error.  And she jumped to her feet, vainly reversing the engine in an effort to back free of the sand wherein the prow had wedged itself so tightly.  But Gavin Brice had already taken charge of the situation.

Stepping overside into the shallow water, he picked up the astounded and vainly protesting girl, bodily, holding her close to him with one arm, while, with his free hand he caught the painter and dragged the boat behind him into water too low for it to float off until the change of tide.

It was the work of a bare ten seconds, from the time he stepped into the shallows until he had brought Claire to the dry sand of the beach.

“Set me down!” she was demanding sternly, for the third time, as she struggled with futile repugnance to slip from his gently firm grip.  “I—­”

“Certainly,” acquiesced Gavin, lowering her to the sand, and steadying her for an instant, until her feet could find their balance.  “Only please don’t glare at me as though I had struck you.  I didn’t think you’d want to get those little white shoes of yours all wet.  So I took the liberty of carrying you.  My own shoes, and all the rest of me, are drenched beyond cure anyhow.  So another bit of immersion didn’t do me any harm.”