, when he stepped to her side. "Go in!" She closed the door
behind him and remained in the kitchen.

He stood in the middle of the room and gazed at the girl for some time,
and neither of them spoke. She was swathed in blankets and was huddled
in a big chair; her face was wan and her eyes showed her weariness. But
her voice was firm and earnest when she addressed him.

"Captain Mayo, what I am going to say to you will sound very strange.
Tell me that you'll listen to me as you would listen to a man."

"I'm afraid--" he stammered.

"It's too bad that man and woman can seldom meet on the plane where man
and man meet. But I don't want to be considered a girl just now. I'm one
human being, and you're another, and I owe something to you which must
be paid, or I shall be disgraced by a debt which will worry me all my
life." She put out her hands and knotted the fingers together in appeal.
"Understand me--help me!"

He was ill at ease. He feared with all his soul to meet the one great
subject.

"When we thought we were going to die I told you it seemed as if I had
lived a life in a few hours--that I did not seem like the same person
as I looked into my thoughts. Captain Mayo, that is true. It is more
apparent to me now when I have had time to search my soul. Oh, I am not
the Alma Marston who has been spoiled and indulged--a fool leaping here
and there with every impulse--watching a girl in my set do a silly thing
and then doing a sillier thing in order to astonish her. That has been
our life in the city. I never knew what it meant to be a mere human
being, near death. You know you saved me from that death!"

"I only did what a man ought to do, Miss Marston."

"Perhaps. But you did it, that's the point. There are other men--" She
hesitated. "I have had a talk with Mr. Bradish," she told him. "It was a
mistake. You saved me from that mistake. You did it in the cabin of the
schooner. He has told me. It was better for me than saving my life."

"But because a man isn't a sailor--isn't used to danger--" he
expostulated.

"That is not it. I say I have just had a talk with Mr. Bradish! I have
found out exactly what he is. I did not find it out when I danced with
him. But now that I have come near to dying with him I have found him
out." The red banners in her cheeks signaled both shame and indignation.
"A coward will show all his nature before he gets himself in hand again,
and Mr. Bradish has shown me that he is willing to