“I see it is all true,” she said quietly. “This 258 is all I have to say. Now I will listen to what you were going to tell me a few minutes ago––that is, if you still wish to say it.”
Nat read his doom in those few calm words. The things that had been in his mind to say rose and choked his throat; the thought of the ring in his pocket seemed like profanation. He gulped twice and tried to speak, but the words clotted on his tongue.
Still she sat quietly looking at him, politely ready to listen.
With a horrible croaking sound he got to his feet, looked irresolutely at her for a moment, and then went to the side where his dory lay. She next saw him rowing dazedly to the Nettle B., and then she turned her face from the sight of him.
And suddenly into her mind, long prepared, came the thought of Code Schofield. Amid the chaos of her shattered ideals his face and figure rose more desirable than all the earth.
“Oh, Heaven, give him to me––some time!” she breathed in a voice of humble prayer.
Nat Burns went back to his schooner, squarely defeated for the first time in his life. Humbled, and cringing like a whipped dog, he made his dory fast to the Nettie’s rail and slunk aft to the solitude of his cabin. He was glad that even the cook was looking the other way.
“She has flouted me, and the whole of Grande Mignon will know it,” he said to himself. “Then they will want to know why, but that is easy enough to lie about. Hang that Mallaby woman! Who would ever think she’d squeal? Yes, and Schofield, the smug crook! They’re the two that are doin’ the damage to me.”
Nat’s lifelong knowledge of Code’s and Nellie’s affection returned to him now with a more poignant pang of memory than he had ever experienced. With the hopeless egotism of a totally selfish nature, he laid his calamity in love to activity on Code’s part. He was pretty well aware of Elsa’s extravagant favoritism of Code, and he immediately figured that Code had enlisted Elsa on his side to the ruin of Nat.