“The Vendetta will be at San Remo when you want her, Allegra. She will be as much at your command there as she has been here; and her skipper will be as much your slave as he is here—as he has been almost ever since he saw your face.”
This was not small talk. This meant something very serious. He had called her Allegra, and she had not reproved him; he had taken her hand and she had not withdrawn it. In the next instant, she knew not how, his arm was round her waist, and her head, weary with the long day’s work and anxieties, was resting contentedly on his shoulder, while his lips set their first kiss, tenderly, reverently almost, on her fair broad brow.
“Allegra, this means yes, does it not? Our lives have flowed on together so peacefully, so happily, since last October. They are to mingle and flow on together to the great sea, are they not, love—the sea of death and eternity.”
“Do you really care for me?”
“Do I really adore you? Yes, dear love. With all my power of adoration.”
“But you must have cared for other girls before now. I can’t believe that I am the first.”
“Believe, at least, that you will be the last, as you are the only woman I ever asked to be my wife.”
“Is that really, really true?”
“It is true as the needle to the north.”
“Yet they say that sailors——”