You know fishermen well enough not to ask that," he laughed, and they
sat down. Elsa did not make any tax upon his conversational powers. It
was Code himself who first put a pertinent question.

"I take for granted your being here and your living like this," he
said; "but I am bursting with curiosity. How do you happen to be in
this schooner?"

"It is my schooner; why shouldn't I be in it?" she smiled.

"Yours?" He was mystified. "But why should you have a vessel like
this? You never used one before that I know of."

"True, Code; but I have always loved the sea, and--it amuses me. You
remember that sometimes I have been away from Freekirk Head for a
month at a time. I have been cruising in this schooner. Once I went
nearly as far as Iceland; but that took longer. A woman in my position
must do something. I _can't_ sit up in that great big house alone all
the time."

The intensity with which she said this put a decidedly new face on the
matter. It was just like her to be lonely without Jim, he thought.
Naturally a woman with all her money must do something.

"But, Elsa," he protested, "your having the schooner for your own use
is all right enough; but why has it always turned up to help me when
I needed help most? Really, if I had all the money in the world I
could never repay the obligations that you have put me under this
summer."

"I don't want you to repay me," she said quietly. "Just the fact that
I have helped you and that you appreciate it is enough to make me
happy."

He looked steadily into her brown eyes for a few moments. Then her
gaze dropped and a dull flush mounted from her neck until it suffused
her face.

He had never seen her look so beautiful. The wealth of her black hair
was coiled about the top of her head like a crown, and held in its
depths a silver butterfly.

Her gown was Quaker gray in color, and of some soft clinging material
that enhanced the lines of her figure. It was an evening gown, and cut
just low enough to be at the same time modest and beautiful. Code,
without knowing why, admired her taste and told himself that she erred
in no particular. Her mode of life was, at the same time, elegant and
feminine--exactly suited her.

"You are easily made happy," he remarked, referring to her last
sentence.

"No, I'm not," she contradicted him seriously. "I am the hardest woman
in the world to make happy."

"And helping me does it?"

"Yes."

"You are a good woman," he said grate