The Egret had completed her curve and with throttled engines was creeping smoothly up to the ditching scow's side.
"You don't have to go back," said Payne. "The ditching can wait. I'll have them moor the ditcher here. You can get aboard the tug and I'll have them take you to Key West, to Fort Myers, Tampa—any place you want to go. From there you can go anywhere, as far away as you wish to go."
"Really?" she cried, "Oh, but that poor little tug—the Egret would catch her in a mile."
"If you get on that tug I will see that you go wherever you wish to go."
"Once aboard the lugger and the girl is free!" she quoted. "No, no. You don't understand. It isn't so simple as that. If it was merely a question of getting away, do you think I would be afraid? It's more than that. It's all in myself, all here." She struck her bosom with a white clenched fist. "It is something in myself—it's something I've got to settle all by myself. You must not try to interfere. Win or lose, no one can help me—no one. That is why I must go back—though I am afraid."
The Egret had crept past the length of the ditcher, disdaining to approach its grimy hull with her immaculate sides. She was approaching the squat little tug. Suddenly the girl held out her hand.
"Good-by," she said.
"Good-by?" he stammered, "Surely it isn't good-by?"
The Egret's starboard ladder was gently chaffing the tug's fender.
"It isn't good-by!" he said.