"I know that," he blurted out. "If I thought you would have done so--but
I knew you wouldn't. And so I've got a grievance to meet yours. After
all, you might have let me give you some trifle----"
"Such as a diamond bracelet, worth perhaps a hundred pounds?"
"To remember me by. After all, it's only natural I should want to leave
something behind me to remind you of me."
"We shan't need such gifts to--to remind us," she said simply. "I think
we had better luff."
The sail swung over as she put the helm down; there was silence for a
moment or two, then he said: "I'm sorry I've offended you, Miss Nell. Perhaps it was beastly bad
taste. I see it now. But just put yourself in my place----" He slid over
the thwart in his eagerness, and coiled himself at her feet. "Supposing
you had broken your confounded arm--I beg your pardon!--your arm, and
had been taken in and tended by good Samaritans, and nursed and treated
like a prince for weeks, and had been made to feel happier than you've
been for--for oh, years, would you like to go away with just a 'Oh,
thanks; awfully obliged; very kind of you'? Wouldn't you want to make a
more solid acknowledgment? Come, be fair and just--if a woman can be
fair and just!--and admit that I'm not such a criminal, after all!"
She looked down at him thoughtfully, then turned her eyes seaward again.
"What do you want me to say?" she asked.
"Oh, well; I see that you won't change your mind about these things, so
perhaps I'd better be content if you'll say: 'I forgive you.'"
A smile flitted across her face as she looked down at him again, but it
was rather a sad little smile.
"I--I forgive you!" she said.
He raised his cap, and took her hand, and, before she suspected what he
was going to do, he put his lips to it.
Her face grew crimson, then pale almost to whiteness. It was the first
time a man's lips had touched her virgin hand, and----A tremor ran
through her, her eyes grew misty, as she looked at him with a
half-pained, half-fearful expression. Then she turned her head away, and
so quickly that he saw neither the change of color nor the expression in
her eyes.
"I feel like a miscreant who had received an unexpected pardon," he said
lightly, and yet with a touch of gravity in his voice, "and, like the
miscreant, I at once proceed to take advantage of the lenity of my
judge."