In the three weeks that followed I urged my love upon her with all of my determination but she refused to change her decision and apparently was as firm in it as at first. It was agreed that we should both give up piracy, in any form, but all of our arguments ended there until finally, one afternoon as we sat looking out over the sea and talking, for once, of the ordinary affairs of life, she said, slowly and emphatically, “Deverell was my father’s right-hand-man. I am going to give this place to him, just as it stands, take the next ship for England, lay my case before the Home Secretary and ask him for a full pardon. I will confess to him that I have taken from the pirates what they had stolen from others. To offset the offence I have hundreds of written statements from people whose lives I have saved from the pirates by coming up in the nick of time, for which service I never accepted payment of any kind. I believe I can secure a pardon and if I do, I will meet you, with a clear conscience, and become your wife.” In a tumult of joy, which came over me with the force of an electric shock, I sprang to her side and started to take her in my arms, but she stretched out her hand and held me off. I had never seen such a serious look on her exquisite face and there were tears in her eyes. “Not yet,” she said, tenderly but firmly. “I have said I would marry you only when my name had been cleared of its dishonor, and until that condition has been complied with you cannot regard me as your promised wife. After that you may do with me as you please, but not until then.” Her accession of conscience had been so great that she considered herself disgraced, and that nothing short of a pardon from the British Government, so bitterly hated by her father, could restore her respectability. With my most persuasive arguments I tried to dissuade her from going to England, but without effect. I urged her to marry me at once and go with me to America or some other country, where we would not be reminded of the past and have nothing to fear from it, but she would not listen. She feared she would be found and arrested later on and bring dishonor on me; she seemed to have no thought of herself in that respect, and, seeing that, I better understood the depth of her great love. No argument of mine could change her and there was nothing to do but fall in with her plan. She packed up the most treasured of her personal effects, paid a last visit to the graves of her father and mother, and two days later we sailed away. Just before going on board she summoned the villagers to the empty warehouse and told them she had given all of her property to Deverell and was going away, never to return. They wept and showed great distress, but Kate was quietly happy and her glorious eyes were firm and undimmed as they looked for the last time on her beauteous isle.