“For a woman who held back as persistently as you did, you have experienced a wonderful change of heart.”
“Did you think I was afraid of loneliness?”
“Lord! I didn’t know what you were afraid of, but I could see you were afraid of something. I had to take it into consideration. It was one of a lot of things working against me which I had to combat.”
There came a long, long pause. Eight bells sounded. The second engineer came out on the lower deck and cursed some of the Filipino crew who had stretched themselves for a night’s rest in such a manner as to block the passage-way.
“Well,” insisted Collingwood, “am I a good guesser or not?”
“About the island? No, dear. My imagination took hold of that at once. The thought of living on a practically uninhabited island stirred up all the romance there is in me.”
“What was it, then? Come, we’re married. Out with it!”
“You told me yourself in so many words that I was coquetting with myself.”
“I never said anything like that,” declared Mr. Collingwood with a vivacity inspired by a premonition of the resentment she might feel. But Charlotte only laughed.
“Those were your exact words,” she insisted. “They were quite true.”