“If it satisfies you. What pleases you must always please me,” he said, politely, and then folded up the telescope and walked away, leaving her suddenly conscious that the deck was very wide and bare, and that she was very lonely and desperately miserable. At breakfast he ignored her in the most pointed way, answering briefly and repressively when she addressed him, but confining his own conversation exclusively to the Princess and Cyril. It was one of the hardest things he had ever done in his life, to keep up this pretence of coldness when he found Nadia’s beautiful eyes scanning his face timidly from time to time; but the remembrance of Cyril’s words the night before armed him with a determination not to yield until he had gained his point. Accordingly, he held aloof from the ladies all the morning, chatting with Captain Binks upon the bridge, and Cyril, who was reading aloud to the Princess as she worked, observed with satisfaction that Nadia’s needle made no progress, and that the reluctant tears dropped slowly on the stuff which she was supposed to be forming into a garment. “She is thoroughly frightened at last,” he said to himself. “After all, it’s just as well that Caerleon should have given her her head so freely hitherto. It makes the sudden pull-up all the more effective. Now, if I can manage it, he shall get things settled this afternoon, for he will never be able to go on with this.” Pity for the desolate Nadia was making itself felt even by the business-like Cyril; but pity itself could not induce him to relax one whit of his precautions for securing a happy ending to Caerleon’s wooing. When they landed that afternoon on a small island, inhabited only by a few fishermen and goatherds, he sent his brother to walk with the Princess, and to carry the stock of Gospels and picture-tracts which she always distributed at the huts they visited, while he himself, on the plea of weakness, followed slowly with Nadia. When the Princess and Caerleon emerged from the little church on the hill-top, whither the village priest had taken them to look at the ancient _icons_ and service-books, they found him waiting for them outside alone. “Miss O’Malachy was tired, and I left her to rest on the way up,” he said. “Caerleon, don’t you think it would be a delicate attention if you went and offered her your arm? Give me the Princess’s books, and we will try and establish communications with the old pope here.” Very willingly Caerleon left his brother talking to the priest in a wonderful medley of dialects, and began to descend the path by which they had come up the hill. A bare-footed little girl herding goats was the only person he saw until he came upon Nadia, sitting upon a stone, with her face buried in her hands. “Can I--can I do anything for you, Miss O’Malachy?” he asked, hesitatingly.