you are,--I don't know _what_ you
are--a compound person, more strange than a hundred strangers... Oh,
_Jim_! how could you? If you realised so much, why couldn't you realise
more? If I was already yours, then why trouble to play a part? Yes, I
am angry; _I am_! I think you were wrong."

"Sweetheart, I know it! Nobody knows it better than I. I am not
excusing myself, only explaining how it came about. One false step, and
then it seemed impossible to go back. I could not face the thought of
owning up on board, we were so happy, so innocently happy, that it
seemed criminal to break it all up. Confess now that I behaved well,
that I made an exemplary escort?"

"You--you--made me dreadfully in love with you," protested Katrine,
stiffening her back, and holding him off with determined hands, when his
delight at the confession took an active form. "_And_ unhappy! Did you
think it was a light thing to me to feel my loyalty slipping from me day
by day--to be obliged to love one man, when another man was waiting?
Did you think I had _no_ heart for Jim Blair?"

"I knew you had, and I loved you for it. Do you remember how you put me
on my guard? But I _was_ Jim Blair, you darling, so all was well. I
was afraid you'd worry, but at the worst it was a matter of _days_, and
those days were going to save us months of waiting. That's the way I
put it, trying to convince myself that all would work out for the best.
We should have remained on terms of the strictest friendship, if--if it
hadn't been for--"

Katrine shuddered. It would be long before she could talk calmly of the
awesome experience through which she had passed. Her arms relaxed, she
sank back, and they clung together in silence for long healing minutes.

"You never told me," she whispered, "even at the end--what we _thought_
was the end! You let me leave you, not knowing... Why did you not tell
me then, and let me die in peace?"

His eyes met hers, gravely, questioning.

"_Would_ it have made for peace? Would death have seemed more easy, or
less? Was your brain clear enough to grasp explanations, or to have
felt any comfort, if you _had_? And, beloved,--in the face of death
what was a _name_? I loved _you_, you loved me, what did it matter by
what name I was called? If it had been the end,--well! it would not
have been as Miss Beverley and Captain--anything, that we should have
met on another plane.--If we were saved, it was only a matter of t