“Oh,” she cried, “don’t say such things!”

“Have you found happiness?” he asked.

She turned her face from him towards their shining wake.  But he had seen that her eyes were filled with sudden tears.

“Forgive me,” he pleaded; “I did not mean to be brutal.  I said that because I felt as I have never in my life felt before.  As I did not know I could feel.  I can’t account for it, but I ask you to believe me.”

“I can account for it,” she answered presently, with a strange gentleness.  “It is because you met me at a critical time.  Such-coincidences often occur in life.  I happened to be a woman; and, I confess it, a woman who was interested.  I could not have been interested if you had been less real, less sincere.  But I saw that you were going through a crisis; that you might, with your powers, build up your life into a splendid and useful thing.  And, womanlike, my instinct was to help you.  I should not have allowed you to go on, but—­but it all happened so quickly that I was bewildered.  I—­I do not understand it myself.”

He listened hungrily, and yet at times with evident impatience.

“No,” he said, “I cannot believe that it was an accident.  It was you—­”

She stopped him with an imploring gesture.

“Please,” she said, “please let us go in.”

Without an instant’s hesitation he brought the sloop about and headed her for the light-ship on Brenton’s reef, and they sailed in silence.  Awhile she watched the sapphire waters break to dazzling whiteness under the westerning sun.  Then, in an ecstasy she did not seek to question, she closed her eyes to feel more keenly the swift motion of their flight.  Why not?  The sea, the winds of heaven, had aided others since the dawn of history.  Legend was eternally true.  On these very shores happiness had awaited those who had dared to face primeval things.

She looked again, this time towards an unpeopled shore.  No sentinel guarded the uncharted reefs, and the very skies were smiling, after the storm, at the scudding fates.

It was not until they were landlocked once more, and the Folly was reluctantly beating back through the Narrows, that he spoke again.

“So you wish me to go away?”

“I cannot see any use in your staying,” she replied, “after what you have said.  I—­cannot see,” she added in a low voice, “that for you to remain would be to promote the happiness of—­either of us.  You should have gone to-day.”

“You care!” he exclaimed.

“It is because I do not wish to care that I tell you to go—­”

“And you refuse happiness?”

“It could be happiness for neither of us,” said Honora.  “The situation would be impossible.  You are not a man who would be satisfied with moderation.  You would insist upon having all.  And you do not know what you are asking.”

“I know that I want you,” he said, “and that my life is won or lost with or without you.”