only to make him care--and then to
trample him ruthlessly underfoot, as he had trampled her.

She began to wonder how long he meant to maintain that uncompromising
silence. From across the water came the gay voices of their
fellow-guests, but no other boat was very near them. His face was in the
shadow, and she had no clue to his mood.

For a while longer she endured his silence. Then at length she spoke:

"Major Hone!"

He started slightly, as one coming out of deep thought.

"Why don't you make conversation?" she asked, with a little cynical
twist of the lips. "I thought you had a reputation for being
entertaining."

"Will it entertain you if I ask for an apology?" said Hone.

"An apology!" She repeated the words sharply, and then softly laughed.
"Yes, it will, very much."

"And yet you owe me one," said Hone.

"I fear I do not always pay my debts," she answered. "But you will find
it difficult to convince me on this occasion that the debt exists."

"Faith, I shall not try!" he returned, with a doggedness that met and
overrode her scorn. "The game isn't worth the candle. I know you will
think ill of me in either case."

"Why, Major Hone?"

He met her eyes in the moonlight, and she felt as if by sheer force he
held them.

"Because," he said slowly, "I have made it impossible for you to do
otherwise."

"Surely that is no one's fault but your own?" she said.

"I blame no one else," said Hone.

And with that he bent again to his work as though he had been betrayed
into plainer speaking than he deemed advisable, and became silent again.

Nina Perceval trailed her hand in the water and watched the ripples.
Those few words of his had influenced her strangely. She had almost for
the moment forgotten her enmity. But it returned upon her in the
silence. She began to remember those bitter years that stretched behind
her, the blind regrets with which he had filled her life--this man who
had tricked her, lied to her--ay, and almost broken her heart in those
far-off days of her girlhood, before she had learned to be cynical.

"And even if I did believe you," she said, "what difference would it
make?"

Hone was silent for a moment. Then--"Just all the difference in the
world," he said, his voice very low.

"You value my good opinion so highly?" she laughed. "And yet you will
make no effort to secure it?"

He turned his eyes upon her again.

"I would move heaven and earth to win it," he said, and she knew