The Olympics had reappeared; the sun dropped behind a cloud over a high crest; shafts of light silvered the gorges; the peaks caught an amethyst glow. Tisdale, tracing once more that far canyon across the front of Constance, walked slowly forward into the bows.
The yacht touched the Bremerton dock to take on the lieutenant who was expected aboard, and at the same time Jimmie Daniels swung lightly over the side aft. The Seattle steamer whistled from her slip on the farther side of the wharf, and he hurried to the gang-plank. There he sent a glance behind and saw Tisdale still standing with his back squared to the landing, looking off over the harbor. And the Press representative smiled. He had gathered little information in regard to the coal question, but in that notebook, buttoned snugly away in his coat, he had set down the papoose story, word for word.
CHAPTER XVI
THE ALTERNATIVE
Tisdale did not follow the lieutenant aft. When the Aquila turned into Port Orchard, he still remained looking off her bows. The sun had set, a soft breeze was in his face, and the Sound was no longer a mirror; it fluted, broke in racy waves; the cutwater struck from them an intricate melody. Northward a few thin streamers of cloud warmed like painted flames, and their reflection changed the sea to running fire. Then he was conscious that some one approached behind him; she stopped at his elbow to watch the brilliant scene. And instantly the spirit of combat in him stirred; his muscles tightened like those of a man on guard.
After a moment she commenced to sing very softly, in unison with the music of the waves along the keel,
"How dear to me the hour when daylight dies."
Even subdued, her voice was beautiful. It began surely, insistently, to undermine all that stout breastwork he had reared against her these twenty-four hours. But he thrust his hands in his pockets and turned to her with that upward look of probing, upbraiding eyes.
The song died. A flush rose over her face, but she met the look bravely. "I came to explain," she said. "I thought at the beginning, when we started on that drive through the mountains, you knew my identity. Afterwards I tried repeatedly to tell you, but when I saw how bitterly you—hated—me, my courage failed."
Her lip trembled over a sighing breath, and she looked, away up the brilliant sea. Tisdale could not doubt her. His mind raced back to incident on incident of that journey; in flashes it was all made clear to him. Even during that supreme hour of the electrical storm had she not tried to undeceive him? He forgave her her transgressions against him; he forgave her so completely that, at the recollection of the one moment in the basin, his pulses sang. Then, inside his pockets, his hands clenched, and he scourged himself for the lapse.