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.

“For what?”

“For staying in Newport.”

Before accepting the invitation she had formulated a policy, cheerfully confident in her ability to carry it out.  For his decision not to leave Newport had had an opposite effect upon her than that she had anticipated; it had oddly relieved the pressure.  It had given her a chance to rally her forces; to smile, indeed, at an onslaught that had so disturbed her; to examine the matter in a more rational light.  It had been a cause for self-congratulation that she had scarcely thought of him the night before.  And to-day, in her blue veil and blue serge gown, she had boarded the ‘Folly’ with her wits about her.  She forgot that it was he who, so to speak, had the choice of ground and weapons.

“I have forgiven you.  Why shouldn’t I, when you have so royally atoned.”