the planking steamy and damp.

"To love, did you say? What _is_ love?" he rejoined coldly, scarcely
even bitterly. But beneath the now fast yielding crust the molten fires
were raging. "Too strong, too self-contained did you say? Well for me
that I am. But if you would care to hear that episode I will tell it
you--now."

She made no answer beyond a bend of the head. Why did he torture her
thus? He was exacting to the last fraction a truly terrible revenge.
For were he murderer, midnight robber, twenty times over, it made no
difference to her now. She loved him, as that six months of separation,
final as she thought it, had taught her how she could love. And he,
triumphing in his strength, in his ultra-human, well-nigh demoniacal
capacity for self-control, he was tearing her very heart strings. It
was a refinement of cruelty. Yet her only fear was lest this meeting--
they two, alone together at last--should be shortened by a single
moment. Still she kept tight hold of his hands, half-mechanically now.

The vessel was gliding smoothly through the oily waters of the tropical
sea: the clang of the engines, the throb of the propeller, the soft wash
of the wave from her stem, the only sounds. The surface was flooded
with patches of phosphorescent light, and here and there in the dim
offing hung a dark and heavy rain-cloud.

"The facts are very ordinary and soon told," he began. "Denton was a
distant relative of mine, and we had grown up close friends from
boyhood. Then we became rivals--in love, you understand--and I was the
favoured one, for I was well off in those days. I believed in people
then--a little--consequently the last thing I dreamt of was to suspect
Denton of being the thief and liar he afterwards turned out. He had the
management of all my affairs, for he was a little older than I, and
shrewd and clever; and, as he afterwards told me, in pursuance of a set
purpose of revenge he started to ruin me. He succeeded, too, and that
very soon, and so completely as to divert pretty nearly all that had
belonged to me into his own pocket; so craftily too, that the law was
powerless to touch him. For I was something bad in the way of a fool in
those days, and trusted everybody. Well, I stood ruined; a very
ordinary and every-day occurrence.

"Then I began to find out the real meaning of the word, love--the real
worth of tenderness and passion and inexhaustible vows. I have found
out since on more