She was standing with her back to the rail, the great white star behind her. As if to emphasize the minute of suspense the engines gradually stopped, while the ship rocked gently on the tide. The lights on shore were more complex now, lights above lights, lights back of lights, with the profusion of seaboard towns even in November. The murmur of voices and the click of heels grew expectant as well as joyous. When she spoke at last it was with breast heaving and eyes downcast. Her words came out staccatowise, as if each made its separate effort to keep itself back. “What would weigh with me? I—I don’t know.” “Does that mean,” I demanded, sharply, “that you might back me up?” I could barely catch her words. “It means first of all that—that I’m awfully weak.” “It isn’t weak, Regina, to—to love.” “It’s weak for a soldier to make love an excuse for not fighting.” “But you’re not a soldier.” “Oh yes, I am; and so are you. We’re all soldiers now—every one in the world. We keep telling ourselves—we keep telling one another—that we’re fighting for right. It’s our great justification. But what’s the use of fighting for public right if we go and do wrong privately?” “But it isn’t right for you to throw yourself away on a man you don’t care for.” “It’s right for me to stand by my word—what is practically my word—till something relieves me from the necessity.” “And do you think anything ever will?” “That’s not what I have to consider. If I do what I know I ought to do I’ve only to wait—and let the next thing come.” “And what you know you ought to do—are you going to do it?” She looked up at me pleadingly, quiveringly, with clasped hands. “I don’t want to do—to do anything else. Oh, Frank, I hope you won’t make me!” It was not this unexpected collapse that made me tremble; it was not this confession; it was the knowledge that I had her in my power. She had seemed so far above me—ever since I knew her; she had seemed so far beyond me, so strong, so aloof, so ice pure, so inflexibly and inaccessibly right! And now she was ready to come to me if I insisted on taking her. But the hungry beast in me was not yet satisfied with her avowals. “Could I, Regina—could I—make you?” I once saw in the eyes of a spaniel that knew it was going to be shot the beseeching, submissive, helpless look I saw here. “You know what I’ve been doing, Frank—the last two years—just to be where I—where I could—hear about you—occasionally—and see you perhaps—when you couldn’t see me.” I bent down toward her, close, closer, till I almost enveloped her. “Yes, I know that—now—and—and I’m—I’m going to make you.” She didn’t answer, but she didn’t withdraw. Perhaps she crept nearer me. Certainly she shivered. The look in her eyes was still helpless, submissive, beseeching; but because it grew mortally frightened as well I repeated what I had said as softly but as firmly as I could make the words: “I’m—I’m going to make you.”