Part 4

“I command you to tell me, Captain Mayo.”

He could not comprehend her mood in the least and his demeanor showed it. Her command had a funny little ripple in it--as of laughter suppressed. There were queer quirks at the corners of her full, red lips.

“Now straighten up like your real self! I don't like to see you standing that way. You know I like to have all the folks on the yachts look at our captain when we go into a harbor! You didn't know it? Well, I do. Now what have you dared to do?”

He did straighten then. “I have dared to fall in love with you, Miss Marston. So have a lot of other fools, I suppose. But I am the worst of all. I am only a sailor. How I lost control of myself I don't know!”

“Not even now?” Still that unexplainable softness in her voice, that strange expression on her face. Being a sailor, he looked on this calm as being ominous presage of a storm.

“I am willing to have you report me to your father, Miss Marston. I will take my punishment. I will never offend you again.”

“You can control yourself after this, can you?”

“Yes, Miss Marston, absolutely.”

She hesitated; she smiled. She lowered her eyelids again and surveyed him with the satisfied tolerance a pretty woman can so easily extend when unconquerable ardor has prompted to rashness.

“Oh, you funny, prim Yankee!” she murmured. “You don't understand even now just why you did it!”

His face revealed that he did not in the least understand.

“Come here,” she invited.

He went three steps across the narrow cabin and stood in an attitude of respectful obedience before her.

“What now, sir?” It was query even more provocative--a smile went with it.

“I apologize. I have learned my lesson.”

“You need to learn a lot--you are very ignorant,” she replied, with considerable tartness.

“Yes,” he agreed, humbly.

What happened then was so wholly outside his reckoning that the preceding events of the evening retired tamely into the background. It had been conceivable that rush of passion might drive him to break all the rules of conduct his New England conscience had set over him; but what Alma Marston did overwhelmed him with such stupefaction that he stood there as rigid and motionless as a belaying-pin in a rack. She put up her arms, pressed her two hands on his shoulders, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him on his lips.

“There, foolish old Yankee,” she said, softly, her mouth close to his; “since you are so ashamed I give you back your kiss--and all is made right between us, because we are just where we started a little while ago.”

His amazement had so benumbed him that even after that surrender he stood there, close to her, his countenance blank, his arms dangling at his side.

“What on earth is the matter with you?” she asked, petulantly.

“I don't know! I--I--I don't seem to understand.”

“I'm going to be honest with you. You are so honest you will understand me, then,” she told him. It seemed to him that he must be mistaken, but he certainly felt her arms were slipping up his shoulders and had met behind his neck. “I saw it in your eyes long ago. A woman always knows. I wanted you to do what you did to-night. I knew I would be obliged to tempt you. I came up here while the moon and the music would help me. I did it all on purpose--I stood close to you--for I knew you were just my slow old Yankee who would never come out of his shell till I poked. There! I have confessed!”

His mad joy did not allow him to see anything of the coquette in that confession. It all seemed to be consecrated by the love he felt for her--a love which was so honest that he perceived no boldness in the attitude of this girl who had come so far to meet him. He took her into his arms again, and she returned his kisses.

“Tell me again, Boyd, that you love me,” she coaxed.

“And yet I have no right to love you. You are--”

“Hush! Hush! There goes your Yankee caution talking! I want love, for I am a girl. Love hasn't anything to do with what you are or what I am. Not now! We will love each other--and wait! You are my big boy! Aren't you?”

He was glad to comply with her plea to put sensible talk from them just then. There was nothing sensible he could say. He was holding Julius Marston's daughter in his arms, and she was telling him that she loved him. The world was suddenly upside down and he was surrendering himself to the mad present.