"Here, fix those cushions a little better!" pointed his master as he helped the vague white figure into the boat. "Here, Dighton, give the lady a hand!" Lifting his eyes for the first time to the little lady's laughing face peering out half-affrighted from her bright disheveled hair, Dighton the man gave a purely involuntary gasp, and stumbled a bit clumsily over some shadowy obstacle. "That's all right, Dighton," laughed his master. "She's got the looks to knock most any man over! Your new Mistress, Dighton!" he called out proudly. "Your--your new Mistress?" bungled the man's addled lips. Scarcely sensing the unhappy twist, but lashed like a whip by the single expletive and ghastly silence that followed it, Daphne curled up in her cushions and prattled her excitement into space. "Oh, what a night!" she cried. "Oh, what tall cocoanut palms! Oh, what bright stars! Oh--oh--oh, whatever in the world shall I [176] do about clothes?" she questioned precipitously. Gayer and gayer her little laugh flashed from her lips. "Why, just for common humanity," she gloated, "Miss Merriwayne will have to lend me a nightie! And shoes and stockings! And a dress! Oh, won't I look funny in Miss Merriwayne's great big clothes?" Dismayed at the unbroken silence she turned and stared up wondering-eyed at the furious, frowning man beside her. "Why--what's the matter Sheridan Kaire?" she whispered. "You look so--sort of--as though your face hurt? Does it?" With her eyes drawn as though by some irresistible fascination to the pale zig-zagged outline of his scar, she asked the one childish question that was left on her lips. "Whoever hurt you so?" she questioned. "Was it in a--a brave war or something? How ever in the world could----" "Hush!" snarled the man. "For God's sake, hush!" Then in passionate contrition he bent down through the darkness and touched his lips to her finger tips. "Forgive me," he pleaded, "my nerves _are_ jumpy!" Brightly the house-boat loomed up before [177] them. In another moment they would be alongside. Once more the man bent down to the little figure beside him. "Just once," he demanded, "from your own lips, I want to hear it! It wasn't I who incited you to run away--was it? It was your own idea, I mean? You'd already made up your mind for some sort of a running--before you stumbled on me? I'm simply the direction you decided to run in?" For a single instant across his worldly young face the question of his own responsibility flecked his lean features into an almost exaggerated asceticism. "I'm not specially anxious, you know, to pose as a seducer of the young." "As a what?" questioned Daphne. Then softly thudding into the big house boat's side the little launch finished its journey, and only the chance of laughter was left to either the man or the girl.