"I fear you will after you have taken time to think it over. But—but perhaps there may be some way in which I can repair the damage I have done."
She looked at him levelly, curiously.
"You are a seaman, are you not?"
"I'm Tunis Latham. I own the schooner Seamew, and command her. We are going to run back and forth from Boston to the Cape—Cape Cod."
"Oh! I could scarcely fill a position on your schooner, Captain Latham."
She smiled again. It was a weary smile, however, not like the former flash of amusement she had shown. Her head drooped as her mind sank into unhappy retrospection. Tunis looked aside at her with a great hunger in his heart to take all her trouble—no matter what it was—upon his own mind and give her the freedom she needed. What or who the girl was did not matter. Even what she had done, or what she had not done meant little to Tunis Latham.
She was the one girl in all this world who had ever interested him beyond a passing moment, and he was convinced that she alone would ever interest him. The cheap environment of their meeting meant nothing. If she was free, her own mistress, and he could get her, he meant to make this girl his wife.
"You didn't tell me your name," he said directly. "Won't you? I have been frank with you."
"Why, so you have," said the girl. There might have been a strata of laughter underlying the words; yet her face was sober enough. "If you really wish to know, Captain Latham, my name is Macklin."
"Miss Macklin?" he asked, a positive tremor in his voice.