“Never mind, love. It will all come right now. I put Greenbushes in the hands of Beever and Copp, and waited to hear from the department. I received my sailing orders yesterday. That was the reason why I spoke to your father and asked for this interview.”
“Oh, Le! Le! can you not yet resign?” pleaded Odalite.
“Yes, dear, of course I can, but not with honor. Having asked for these orders, I must obey them. I must not trifle with duty, dear Odalite,” he answered, gravely.
“Oh, Le, and there seems no real necessity for you to go!”
“Honor, love,” gently suggested the youth.
“When do you leave us, and where are you going this time, Le?”
“I leave on the second of January, to join my ship at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, to sail in a few days after for the Pacific coast.”
“Oh, I am so sorry! But I ought not to say so, Le. I ought not to say anything to make it harder to do your duty, and I will not.”
“Dearest Odalite, will you say something that will make it easy for me to do my duty? Will you say that you will correspond with me regularly while I am gone, as you did during my first voyage? And will you promise that when I return, three years hence, and leave the service—as I can with honor then—you will give me this dear hand of yours, which I cannot help feeling belongs to me only, and has belonged to me of right all the time? Say you will give me your hand, Odalite! Shall I go away happy in the knowledge that you are to be my wife on my return?”
“Oh, yes! Yes, Le! With all my heart!” she impulsively answered. Then, catching her breath in a spasmodic way, as some painful thought sped like an arrow through her heart, she added, in a subdued tone: “But, Le, before anything of that sort is quite settled between us, I want you to talk with my mother about it.”