"It is very shocking!" she murmured; "only you don't seem to realize it at all."
"Don't I? You must remember that I have been arguing from your point of view. My own is quite unchanged. It is your duty to do what you must do; it is my affair to avert the consequences to myself, if I can manage it without taking an unfair advantage of your frankness."
"What will you do?"
"It would be bad faith now for me to try to run away from the steamer, as I meant to do. So far, you have bound me by your candor. But beyond that I make no promises. My parole will be at an end when the officers appear, and I shall do what I can to dodge, or to escape if I am taken. Is that fair?"
"It is more than fair: I can't understand."
"What is it that you can't understand?"
"How you can do this; how you can do such things as the one you did last night, and still——"
He finished the sentence for her.—"And still be a common robber of banks, and the like. I fancy it is a bit puzzling—from your point of view. Sometime, perhaps, we shall all understand things better than we do now, but to that time, and beyond it, I shall be your grateful debtor for what you have done to-night. May I go now?"
She gave him leave, and when he was gone, she went to her state-room to write as he had suggested. An hour later she gave the newly written letter to the night clerk; and the thing was done.
During the remainder of the slow up-river voyage to St. Louis, Charlotte Farnham lived as one who has fired the fuse of a dynamite charge and is momently braced for the shock of the explosion. Each morning she assured herself that the strange man who could be a self-confessed felon one moment and a chivalrous gentleman the next was still a member of the Belle Julie's crew; but she became a coward of landings, not daring to look on for fear she should see him arrested and taken away.