pt her promise
bravely. The whole story of her life, from the time of the home-wreck at
Combe-Raven to the time when she had destroyed the Secret Trust in her
sister's presence, had been all laid before him. Nothing that she had
done, nothing even that she had thought, had been concealed from his
knowledge. As he would have kept a pledged engagement with her, so she
had kept her pledged engagement with him. She had not faltered in
the resolution to do this; and now she faltered over the one decisive
question which she had come there to ask. Strong as the desire in her
was to know if she had lost or won him, the fear of knowing was at that
moment stronger still. She waited and trembled; she waited, and said no
more.

"May I speak to you about your letters?" he asked. "May I tell you--?"

If she had looked at him as he said those few words, she would have seen
what he thought of her in his face. She would have seen, innocent as
he was in this world's knowledge, that he knew the priceless value, the
all-ennobling virtue, of a woman who speaks the truth. But she had no
courage to look at him--no courage to raise her eyes from her lap.

"Not just yet," she said, faintly. "Not quite so soon after we have met
again."

She rose hurriedly from her chair, and walked to the window, turned back
again into the room, and approached the table, close to where he was
sitting. The writing materials scattered near him offered her a pretext
for changing the subject, and she seized on it directly. "Were you
writing a letter," she asked, "when I came in?"

"I was thinking about it," he replied. "It was not a letter to be
written without thinking first." He rose as he answered her to gather
the writing materials together and put them away.

"Why should I interrupt you?" she said. "Why not let me try whether I
can't help you instead? Is it a secret?"

"No, not a secret."

He hesitated as he answered her. She instantly guessed the truth.

"Is it about your ship?"

He little knew how she had been thinking in her absence from him of the
business which he believed that he had concealed from her. He little
knew that she had learned already to be jealous of his ship. "Do they
want you to return to your old life?" she went on. "Do they want you to
go back to the sea? Must you say Yes or No at once?"

"At once."

"If I had not come in when I did would you have said Yes?"

She unconsciously laid her hand on his arm, forgetting all infer