“Sit down,” he said, laying a hand on her dress and (aided by a lurch of the vessel) pulling her into her seat again, “and listen to me. And then I shall insist upon an apology. This is too much!”
“I shall ask the captain——”
“You will not, I promise you. Look here! When I was in Panama, I met there a fellow I used to know in New York. He told me that he had recently crossed the continent with Professor Meschines, who used to teach geology and botany at Yale College, when he and I were students there. The professor had come over partly for the fun of the thing, and partly to look for specimens in the line of his profession. My friend parted from him at San Francisco: the professor was going farther south.”
“What has all this to do with the woman who——”
“It has this to do with it,—that the professor is the woman! He is over sixty years old, and has always been a good friend of mine; but I am not going to marry him. I am not engaged to him, he is not beautiful, nor even fascinating, except in the way of an elderly man of science. And he is the only human being, besides yourself, that I know or have ever heard of on the Pacific coast. Now for your apology!”
Grace emitted a long breath, and sank back in her seat, with her hands clasped in her lap. She raised her hands and covered her face with them. She removed them, sat erect, and bent an open-eyed, intent gaze upon her companion.
After this pantomime, she exclaimed, in the lowest and most musical of tones, “Oh! how hateful you are!” Then she cried out with animation, “I believe you did it on purpose!” Finally, she sank back again, with a soft laugh and sparkling eyes, at the same time stretching out her right arm towards him and placing her hand on his, with a whispered, “There, then!”
Freeman, accepting the hand for the apology, kissed it, and continued to hold it afterwards.
“Am I not a little goose?” she murmured.
“You certainly are,” replied Freeman.