nkly, it looked like stupidity."

"I haven't been called stupid usually, have I?"

"No. I've heard you called many things, but never that."

Every inch of his five-feet-five was pluck. He could take her shots
broadside, and laugh while he winced. "You've heard me called a good
many things not complimentary, I suppose, for I know I'm not much to
look at, and I've an edge to my tongue sometimes. What is the worst
thing you ever said of me?" he added a little bitterly.

"What I say to you now--though, by the way, I've never said it
before--that your self-confidence is appalling. Don't you know that
I'm very popular, that they say I'm clever, and that I'm a tall,
good-looking girl?"

She looked down at him, and said it with such a delightful naivete,
through which a tone of raillery ran, that it did not sound as it
may read. She knew her full value, but no one had ever accused her of
vanity--she was simply the most charming, outspoken girl in the biggest
city of Australia.

"Yes, I know all that," he replied with an honest laugh. "When you were
a little child,--according to your mother, and were told you were not
good, you said: 'No, I'm not good--I'm only beautiful.'"

Dibbs had a ready tongue, and nothing else he said at the moment could
have had so good an effect. She laughed softly and merrily. "You have
awkward little corners in your talk at times. I wonder they didn't
reduce you at the court-martial. You were rather keen with your words
once or twice there."

A faint flush ran over Dibbs's face, but he smiled through it, and
didn't give away an inch of self-possession. "If the board had been
women, I'd have been reduced right enough--women don't go by evidence,
but by their feelings; they don't know what justice really is, though by
nature they've some undisciplined generosity."

"There again you are foolish. I'm a woman. Now why do you say such
things to me, especially when--when you are aspiring! Properly, I ought
to punish you. But why did you say those sharp things at your trial?
They probably told against you."

"I said them because I felt them, and I hate flummery and
thick-headedness. I was as respectful as I could be; but there were
things about the trial I didn't like--irregular things, which the
Admiral himself, who knows his business, set right."

"I remember the Admiral said there were points about the case that he
couldn't quite understand, but that they could only go by such testimony
as th