'I thought I was on the island!' she said with a sigh.
'Would you like to go back there?' he asked. A vague, wild fancy came to him of buying back her lost paradise for her at any cost. She hesitated.
'It would not be the same,' she said at last. 'I should not be the same, you know. But sometimes I want the sea so much! I want the sight of it, the scent of it, the feel of the wind from it blowing on my face! He was very cruel, but, I suppose, he could not help it. He was disappointed in me, and that made him very hard. When he found that he could not force me to marry my cousin he became quite mad. He took me down to the water, and put me in one of the small boats, and he told me to go, just as I was, with nothing but the clothes I had on and the gold cross Monsignor gave me at my first communion, which I always wore at my throat, and a few trinkets which had belonged to my mother. He ordered me to row away or he would fire upon me.'
'Good God, what a brute!' cried Othmar.
'I am sure he did not intend to really hurt me,' she said earnestly. 'I am sure he only meant to frighten me, and thought I should go back to him and do what he wished me to do. He never supposed, I dare say, that I should take him at his word and go.'
'Few of your age and sex would have had the courage to do so.'
A look of contempt passed over her face.
'I would have given myself to the sharks sooner than return and give in. One must be a very weak creature to be driven like that.'
'Why did you not come to us?'
'I could not have done that.'