“I merely set that as a probable date.  I have changed my mind.  There is no immediate necessity.  Do you wish me to go?” he demanded.

She had turned away, and was straightening the books on the table.

“Why should I?” she said.

“You wouldn’t object to my remaining a few days more?” He had reached the doorway.

“What have I to do with your staying?” she asked.

“Everything,” he answered—­and was gone.

She stood still.  The feeling that possessed her now was rebellion, and akin to hate.

Her conduct, therefore, becomes all the more incomprehensible when we find her accepting, the next afternoon, his invitation to sail on Mr. Farnham’s yacht, the ‘Folly’.  It is true that the gods will not exonerate Mrs. Shorter.  That lady, who had been bribed with Alfred Dewing, used her persuasive powers; she might be likened to a skilful artisan who blew wonderful rainbow fabrics out of glass without breaking it; she blew the tender passion into a thousand shapes, and admired every one.  Her criminal culpability consisted in forgetting the fact that it could not be trusted with children.

Nature seems to delight in contrasts.  As though to atone for the fog she sent a dazzling day out of the northwest, and the summer world was stained in new colours.  The yachts were whiter, the water bluer, the grass greener; the stern grey rocks themselves flushed with purple.  The wharves were gay, and dark clustering foliage hid an enchanted city as the Folly glided between dancing buoys.  Honora, with a frightened glance upward at the great sail, caught her breath.  And she felt rather than saw the man beside her guiding her seaward.

A discreet expanse of striped yellow deck separated them from the wicker chairs where Mrs. Shorter and Mr. Dewing were already established.  She glanced at the profile of the Viking, and allowed her mind to dwell for an instant upon the sensations of that other woman who had been snatched up and carried across the ocean.  Which was the quality in him that attracted her? his lawlessness, or his intellect and ambition?  Never, she knew, had he appealed to her more than at this moment, when he stood, a stern figure at the wheel, and vouchsafed her nothing but commonplaces.  This, surely, was his element.

Presently, however, the yacht slid out from the infolding land into an open sea that stretched before them to a silver-lined horizon.  And he turned to her with a disconcerting directness, as though taking for granted a subtle understanding between them.

“How well you sail,” she said, hurriedly.

“I ought to be able to do that, at least,” he declared.

“I saw you when you came in the other day, although I didn’t know who it was until afterwards.  I was standing on the rocks near the Fort, and my heart was in my mouth.”

He answered that the Dolly was a good sea boat.

“So you decided to forgive me,” he said.