"I can't," he replied ruefully; "it's comic only for me, and no one else will ever see it. Ah, but if you knew!" "I _do_ know," she exclaimed imposingly, "and every one else knows that you were a hero." "On Monday?" he queried. "Yes," she said proudly, "on Monday." "Heroes were cheap on Monday," he explained with a whimsical sigh, "but I've been a hero when heroes were very, very dear." She looked at him with the wistful misgiving which was always stirred by his half-serious banter. "I know a hero," she said, "who is very, very dear to-day." He met the love in her eyes with such a tender appreciation that, disregarding the windows, she had half risen to kiss him, when the head steward entering, wrinkled with smiles and suffusing the joyousness of the occasion, set a breakfast tray between them. He greeted Lettice with the custom of an old retainer, and commented on Caragh's health as though personally responsible for its condition. "We're all that proud of him, miss, I can tell you," he said as he withdrew with the covers. But his flattery was spoilt for Lettice by the appearance of a meal which declared the newness of the morning with such emphasis. "Was it awful, coming at such an hour?" she begged of Caragh. "Shocking," he said unmoved; "five minutes earlier and you'd have found me in my bath." "Oh!" she groaned; "I wish I'd waited for you on shore." "In that case," he said, "I should probably have never landed." "Never landed!" "No," he went on; "I should have taken your absence for a sign that you couldn't goad yourself to meet me; that you were cowering at home, dreading my arrival, and with your heart lost to a much lovelier young man." "Oh, Maurice!" "Yes," he continued; "I have never been able to believe that any woman's flighty little soul could be worthy of my own virgin and unchangeable affection." "Maurice," she pleaded, "don't say things like that to-day; I want you to be quite serious and quite yourself." "Heaven forbid!" he protested as he took her hand. The chief engineer had devised a sling to lower Caragh into the boat; the purser had illuminated an inscription to him, signed by every one on board; there seemed to be innumerable hands to shake and good wishes to respond to before the boat was clear of the ship's side. And then he had to wave his hat again and again to the cheers and shouts of farewell, Lettice sitting beside him burning like a rose. But her hour came when she had him laid at last upon a sofa by his favourite window, and was kneeling on the floor beside him. Her mouth had been thirsting all day to kiss him, and when he leaned his head back and smiled at her she set her lips on his as though to drink from them.