"I am so glad. I love that name. And you must call me Val, Joe."
"Val," he said gently.
"I want to speak to you, Joe--to tell you things about myself. You know so little of me--it is good of you to take me on trust like this--but I must tell you all about my wandering, vagabond life, my wretched marriage."
His arm stiffened under her hand. They had reached the stern-end of the deck, and instead of turning again he drew her to the taffrail; they stood facing the vast waste of heaving violet waters that lay in their awake.
"Leave it all behind you, as we are leaving that troubled sea," he said quietly. He seemed to have grown paler, and his mouth looked hard for all his gentle words.
"If you wish it?" she faltered.
"I do wish it."
"Oh, how glad I should be! There has been much in my life that I loved, Joe--my work has been dear to me and my wanderings. But there have been bitter things--and my sorrows--they hurt, they hurt--it makes me sick to drag them up from their graves, like sad little corpses into the sunlight of our happiness."
It made him sick too. It was bitterer to him than death that in the life of this woman of his dreams there should be such graves that feared the light. He too feared the miserable process of exhumation. God knew what ghastly unforgettable bones might be turned up! He did not realise that through this very cowardly fear he was building up a skeleton to stand between them, clanking its bones in their dearest moments.
"Leave them all, Val," he spoke violently. "God knows I want to know nothing--only to make the condition with you that you forget all your life until we met--that you pull up every old root--burn every boat?"