ush of
anguished tears.

Pierre said no more. His hard mouth grew a little harder, his steely
eyes a shade more steely--that was all. He bore her unfaltering through
the saloon to the state cabin beyond, and laid her down there.

In another second she heard the click of the latch, and his step upon
the threshold. Softly the door closed. Softly he went away.

VI

And Stephanie slept. From her paroxysm of weeping she passed into deep,
untroubled slumber, and hour after hour slipped over her unconscious
head while she lay at rest.

When she awoke at last the evening sun was streaming in through the tiny
porthole by the head of her couch, and she knew that she must have slept
throughout the day. She was very drowsy still, and for a while she lay
motionless, listening to the monotonous beat of the yacht's engines, and
watching the white spray as it tossed past.

Very gradually she began to remember what had happened to her. She
glanced at her wounded hand, swathed in bandages and resting upon a
cushion. Who had arranged it so, she wondered? How had it been done
without her waking?

At the back of her mind hovered the answers to both these questions, but
she could not bring herself to face them--not yet. She was loth to
withdraw herself from the haze of sleep that still hung about her. She
shrank intuitively from a full awakening.

And then, while she still loitered on the way to consciousness, there
came a soft movement near her, and in a moment all her repose was
shattered.

Pierre, his dark face grimly inscrutable, bent over her with a cup of
something steaming in his hand.

She shrank at the sight of him. Her whole body seemed to contract.
Involuntarily almost she shut her eyes. Her heart leapt and palpitated
within her like a chained thing seeking to escape.

Then suddenly it stood still. He was speaking.

"Mademoiselle Stephanie," he said, "I beg you will not agitate yourself.
You have no cause for agitation. It is not by my own wish that I intrude
upon you. I have no choice."

It was curtly uttered. It sounded rigidly uncompromising. Yet, for some
reason wholly inexplicable to herself, she was conscious of relief. She
opened her eyes, though she did not dare to raise them.

"How is that, monsieur?" she said faintly.

He was silent for a moment; then:

"There is no woman on board besides yourself," he told her briefly.
"Your own people deserted you. I had no time to search for others."

Sh