"Not really," he said, with affected carelessness. "Diamonds are very cheap now; they find 'em by the bucketful in the Cape, you know." She looked at him with grave reproach. "You are trying to belittle it," she said; "but, indeed, I am not deceived. And the gun, too! That must have been very expensive. Why--did you spend so much?" He began to feel irritated. "Look here, Miss Nell," he said; "it is true that I have lost some money, but I'm not quite a pauper, and, if I were, the least I could do would be to share my last crust with--with your people for their amazing goodness to me." "A diamond bracelet and an expensive gun are not crusts," she said, shaking her head. "Oh, dash it all!" he retorted impatiently. "The stupid things only very inadequately represent my----Oh, I'm bad at speech making and expressing myself. And don't you think you ought to be very grateful to me?" She frowned slightly in the effort to understand. "Grateful! I have just been telling you that I think you ought not to have spent so much. Why should I be grateful?" "That I didn't buy something for you," he said. She colored, and looked away from him. "I--I should not have accepted it," she said. "I know that," he blurted out. "If I thought you would have done so--but I knew you wouldn't. And so I've got a grievance to meet yours. After all, you might have let me give you some trifle----" "Such as a diamond bracelet, worth perhaps a hundred pounds?" "To remember me by. After all, it's only natural I should want to leave something behind me to remind you of me." "We shan't need such gifts to--to remind us," she said simply. "I think we had better luff." The sail swung over as she put the helm down; there was silence for a moment or two, then he said: "I'm sorry I've offended you, Miss Nell. Perhaps it was beastly bad taste. I see it now. But just put yourself in my place----" He slid over the thwart in his eagerness, and coiled himself at her feet. "Supposing you had broken your confounded arm--I beg your pardon!--your arm, and had been taken in and tended by good Samaritans, and nursed and treated like a prince for weeks, and had been made to feel happier than you've been for--for oh, years, would you like to go away with just a 'Oh, thanks; awfully obliged; very kind of you'? Wouldn't you want to make a more solid acknowledgment? Come, be fair and just--if a woman can be fair and just!--and admit that I'm not such a criminal, after all!" She looked down at him thoughtfully, then turned her eyes seaward again. "What do you want me to say?" she asked. "Oh, well; I see that you won't change your mind about these things, so perhaps I'd better be content if you'll say: 'I forgive you.'" A smile flitted across her face as she looked down at him again, but it was rather a sad little smile. "I--I forgive you!" she said. He raised his cap, and took her hand, and, before she suspected what he was going to do, he put his lips to it.