"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.