“Forever, Helena. Or, at least, until——”
“Until when?”
“Until you say you will marry me, Helena.”
She made no answer now at all beyond a scornful shrug of her shoulders. “Suppose I can not?” she said at last.
“If you can not, all the same you must and shall!” said I. “You shall be prisoner until you do.”
“Is there no law for such as you?”
“No. None on the high sea. None in my heart. Only one law I know any more, Helena—I who have upheld the law, obeyed it, reverenced it.”
“And that?”
“The law of the centuries, of the forest, of the sea. The law of love, Helena.”
“Ah, you go about it handsomely! If you wished me to despise you, to hate you, this would be very fit, what you say.”