ink
that the romantic surroundings had inflamed my imagination, and that I
was apprehensive of a lurid story. Not at all. I had turned the matter
over, in my prosaic way, for several voyages, and I put the question to
Rosa in a direct and simple form. I asked her who she was. It is all
very well, in novels, for shy damsels to run into the arms of some
casual Prince Charming, or for heroic clean-cut young college-men with
over-developed jaw-bones to marry strange girls for, I suppose, heroic
reasons. All very well in novels. But you try that sort of thing in real
life, and see where you land. I don't mean externals--parents, social
sets or legal tarradiddles. Such things are very slight obstacles. I
mean the tremendous obstacles inside you: the mass of your inherited
shrinkings and shynesses and delicacy; a whole quickset hedge of
brambles and nettles and thistles, behind which your naked soul is
hiding in a sort of terror; and you can't do it! I was in that position,
because, so far, Rosa had made no reference to her birth except to say
that, although Rebecca wasn't her mother, she was as good as one.

"And Rebecca, when I had mentioned the matter to her one day, had said,
with her chin resting on her knuckles, 'Ask Rosa.' I said.

"'Ask her what?'

"'Ask her if she wants you to know all about it.'

"'Why,' I said, 'is there so much to know?'

"'Little enough,' said she, 'but Rosa made Oscar and me promise to say
nothing unless she gave us the word.'

"'So Oscar knows it as well,' I said. Oscar was the steward Rebecca had
married a few years before, a Dutchman, who was nearly always at sea
when I was in Genoa, so I saw very little of him.

"'Of course, Oscar knows,' said Rebecca. 'He knows a good deal of it
first hand.'

"'All right, I'll speak to Rosa,' I said.

"And I did, as I was telling you. I asked her who she was.

"'You have a good right to know,' she said, looking up to where a
sentry's head and bayonet were sliding to and fro above the wall. 'I
have meant to tell you, but I know very little. So little!'

"I said I left the matter in her hands entirely.

"The sentry stopped above us, presented arms, grounded, looked round,
and then took a peep at us over the corner. A pair of lovers! His
yellow, livid face cracked a smile as I caught his eye. For another
second or so we grinned at each other, and then he put on his
professional mask again, as though he had drawn down a vizor, shouldered
his rifle