She was about to reply, when the sound of footsteps reached them from the port alley-way, and, before they had set foot upon the first step, MacAndrew and the fugitive stood before them. Browne noticed that Katherine instinctively shrank away from the latter. He accordingly slipped his arm round her, and, telling MacAndrew that he would like to speak to him in a few minutes, led her to the deck above.
CHAPTER XXX
Their first business when they reached the deck was to glance in the direction whence they had last seen the cruiser. Then she had been a living and very present reality to them; now she was only a tiny speck upon the horizon, and in a quarter of an hour, or even less, she would have vanished altogether. They made their way aft to the taffrail, and stood there leaning on the rail, looking at her. Both felt that it was a crisis in their lives, that had to be tided over, and knew that, if ever they desired to be happy together, they must fight the next ten minutes on their merits. For this reason, perhaps, they began by being unusually silent. It was Katherine who spoke first.
"Dearest," she commenced very slowly, "I want you to listen to me and not to speak until I have finished. I have something to say to you, and I don't quite know how to say it. I don't want you to think that I am capricious, or that I think only of myself. In this I am thinking of you, and of your happiness only."
"I can quite believe that," Browne replied, trying to force down the lump that was rising in his throat. "But I must hear you out before I can say more. What is it you have to say to me?"
"I want you"—here she paused as if she were fighting for breath—"I want you to give up any idea of marrying me, and to put me ashore at the first port at which you call. Will you do this?"
Nearly a minute elapsed before Browne answered. When he did his voice was curiously husky.
"Katherine," he said, "this is just like you. It is like your noble nature to try and make my path smoother, when your own is so difficult that you can scarcely climb it. But you don't, surely, suppose that I should do what you ask—that I should give you up and allow you to go out of my life altogether, just because you have been tricked as I have been?"
She glanced up at him with a face as white as the foam upon which they looked. What she would have replied I cannot say; but at that moment MacAndrew, accompanied by Jimmy Foote, appeared on deck. The latter approached them and asked Browne if he could spare him a few minutes. Not being averse to any proposal, that would tend to mitigate the severity of the ordeal he was then passing through, Browne consented.