“I believe that’s true,” said Florence.

“Were I to act ze distracted lover, you would laugh in my face,” he went on earnestly.  “Were I to propose and be refused, my pride would not let me—­my instinct as gentleman would not let me—­go trailing after you with my long face.  The idyll would be over.  I would go!”

“There are times when I think a heap of you,” said Florence encouragingly.

“Oh, I know so well how it would be,” he continued.  “A week of doubt—­of fever; a rain of little notes; and then with your good clear honest Far Vest sense you would say:  No, mon cher, it is eempossible!”

“Yes, I suppose I would,” said Florence.

“I would rather be your friend all my life,” said the count, “than to be merely one of the rejected.  I have no ambition to place my name on that already great list.  I have never yet asked a woman to marry me, and when I do I care not for the expectation of being refused!”

“You are like all Europeans,” said Florence, “you believe in a sure thing.”

“My heart is not on my sleeve,” he returned, “and I value it too highly to lose it without compensation.”

“It is interesting to hear all your views,” said Florence.  “I am sure I appreciate the compliment highly.  It’s a new idea, this of the wolf making a confidant of the lamb.”

“Oh, my dear!” he broke out, “I am only a poor devil holding back from committing a great stupidity.”

“Is that how you describe marrying me?” she said lightly.

“Ze day will come,” he said, disregarding her question, “I think it will—­I hope it will—­when you will say to me:  My dear fellow, I am tired of all this fictitious gaiety; of all this rush and bustle and flirtation; of this life of fever and emptiness.  I long for peace and do not know where to find it.  I am like a piece of music to whom one waits in vain for the return to the keynote.  Tell me where to find it or else I die!”

“Rather forward of me to say all that, Count,” observed the girl.  “But suppose I did—­what then?”

The count opened wide his arms.

“I would answer:  here!” he said.

V

Thus the bright days passed, amid animating scenes, with memories of sky and cloud and noble headlands and stately, beautiful ships.  Like two ocean sweethearts the Minnehaha and the Paquita took their restless way together, side by side in port, inseparable at sea.  At night the one lit the other’s road with a string of ruby lanterns and kept the pair in company across the dark and silent water.  Their respective crews, not behindhand in this splendid camaraderie of ships, fraternised in wine-shops and strolled through the crooked foreign streets arm in arm.  Breton and American, red cap and blue, sixty of the one and eighty of the other—­they were brothers all and cemented their friendship in blood and gunpowder, in tattooed names, flags and mottoes, after the time-honoured and artless manner of the sea.