“Ah, am I dreaming, or is this a blissful reality? Did her lips move, her eyelids flutter?” But it was no dream as he feared, no fancy of an overwrought brain. A faint tinge of color had crept into the waxen cheek, the eyelids fluttered nervously, the lips parted in a strangling gasp. A cry of rapture escaped his lips, and at the sound so close to her ears Jessie opened wide her eyes with a dazed look straight upon his face. There was no recognition at first. It was the startled wonder of a very young infant that looked out upon him--an infant just waking from sleep. But little by little comprehension dawned on her mind. She recognized a familiar face presently, read passionate love in the blue eyes fixed upon her own, recalled his identity, and wondered why they were drifting thus with her head upon his arm, through sunlit seas together. CHAPTER XXIX. ALONE TOGETHER. Laurier watched Jessie’s great, dark eyes widen and darken with feeling, and guessed the thought in her mind before she murmured in anguish: “Papa!” He answered tenderly: “Afloat somewhere on the wide, wide sea, as we are, little Jessie, and held in the hollow of the same Divine Hand that is able to save us even from this terrible plight. Be brave, and let us hope for the best.” His voice trembled, for he knew too well how desperate were their chances, how slender the thread of hope to which they could cling. Yet he was not at all unhappy. All that the world held for him as dearest and sweetest was beside him here in the person of this girl almost a stranger to him, yet so fatally dear that she blotted out everything on earth beside. The world is naught till one is come Who is the world; then beauty wakes, And voices sing that have been dumb. As for Jessie, as full memory returned and she found herself alone with Laurier on the sunlit sea, under his tender care, her feelings were unenviable. When she heard that he was on the steamer it brought back all the cruel past with a rush of pain. When she saw him that night and the next day and that night again on the steamer, she could hardly bear it. When she felt him looking at her, hot blushes burned her face lest he should recognize her as the girl who had given him an unrequited love from which he had turned in disgust. But in spite of all her pride, she could not help looking at him at the rare times when he was not looking at her, and she saw that he was handsomer than ever, but with a different expression, a gravity he had not worn when she knew him first; something that was almost sadness lurking in his dark-blue eyes, and chastening the debonair smile that had thrilled her heart with such subtle tenderness. She knew from the captain that he had sought an introduction to her, but she was frightened at the bare idea of it. She would not have spoken to him for anything the world held.