"Sweetheart, I know it! Nobody knows it better than I. I am not excusing myself, only explaining how it came about. One false step, and then it seemed impossible to go back. I could not face the thought of owning up on board, we were so happy, so innocently happy, that it seemed criminal to break it all up. Confess now that I behaved well, that I made an exemplary escort?" "You--you--made me dreadfully in love with you," protested Katrine, stiffening her back, and holding him off with determined hands, when his delight at the confession took an active form. "_And_ unhappy! Did you think it was a light thing to me to feel my loyalty slipping from me day by day--to be obliged to love one man, when another man was waiting? Did you think I had _no_ heart for Jim Blair?" "I knew you had, and I loved you for it. Do you remember how you put me on my guard? But I _was_ Jim Blair, you darling, so all was well. I was afraid you'd worry, but at the worst it was a matter of _days_, and those days were going to save us months of waiting. That's the way I put it, trying to convince myself that all would work out for the best. We should have remained on terms of the strictest friendship, if--if it hadn't been for--" Katrine shuddered. It would be long before she could talk calmly of the awesome experience through which she had passed. Her arms relaxed, she sank back, and they clung together in silence for long healing minutes. "You never told me," she whispered, "even at the end--what we _thought_ was the end! You let me leave you, not knowing... Why did you not tell me then, and let me die in peace?" His eyes met hers, gravely, questioning. "_Would_ it have made for peace? Would death have seemed more easy, or less? Was your brain clear enough to grasp explanations, or to have felt any comfort, if you _had_? And, beloved,--in the face of death what was a _name_? I loved _you_, you loved me, what did it matter by what name I was called? If it had been the end,--well! it would not have been as Miss Beverley and Captain--anything, that we should have met on another plane.--If we were saved, it was only a matter of two or three days..." "One can suffer a good deal in two or three days! How do you suppose I felt in that train, looking forward to meeting you--_both_!" His eyes twinkled; the grave face broke into a smile. "Exactly as you would have done, for months instead of days, if we had kept to the original agreement! No! beloved, I apologise, but don't expect me to be abject. I've thought it out, not once, but a dozen times, and I can't see that on the whole you've suffered more than you were bound to do in any case. And what have you been saved? Three months of uncertainty and waiting. And what have you gained? Three months of happiness to add to the score of life. It's a big haul, my Katrine! It is worth a few pangs?"