The color flamed in his face; it vanished from hers. “You got my note?” she said. “And you are sailing anyhow?” “I did not get your note,” replied he. “But I am not sailing.... One moment, please.” Then to the chief steward: “There is also a note for me. I must have it.” “Parfaitement, Monsieur.” And the chief steward raced up the gangway. Roger and Beatrice stood aside in a quiet place, a calm in the surging crowd of the voyagers and their friends. Beatrice looked at him with that fine, frank directness which had been her most conspicuous trait in all her dealings with him. Said she: “In my note I asked you to take me on any terms or on no terms. All I wish is to be near you and to love you.” She spoke the words without any trace of emotion in either tone or manner--spoke them with a certain monotonous finality that gave them all the might of the simply genuine. And he answered in much the same way. “I am not sailing,” said he, “because--because to love you and to have you--that’s life for me. The rest isn’t worth talking about.” “Not worth talking about,” echoed she. “I don’t know whether we’ll be happy or not, but I do know it’s my only chance to be anything but miserable.” “I don’t know whether I could get over you or not,” was his matching confession, “but I do know that I don’t want to--and won’t.” A moment’s silence, with the two gazing up at the towering steamer through the great doors in the pier shed. Then his eyes turned to her, to look at her with an intensity that made her feel as if she had been suddenly seized in strong yet gentle arms and were being borne by mighty wings up and up and still up. “Chang,” she said between laughing and sobbing, “I must have been crazy yesterday to refuse you.” “No--you’re crazy to-day. So am I. That is, I’m normal again--what’s been normal for me ever since I knew you. And I hope the day’ll never come when I’ll be sane.” “Are you happy now?” “Delirious.” “As we used to be when we were together by the cascade?” “Like that--only a thousand times more so.” And they gazed at each other with foolish-fond eyes, and from their lips issued those extraordinary sounds that seem imbecile or divine, according as the listening ears are attuned. “Your father was right,” said Roger. “Love is master.” Again she was seeing the new and more wonderful and more compelling Chang. “I found that everything was going to stop stock-still if I went away from you.” The chief steward, bearing the note, and his assistants who had been collecting Roger’s luggage around him, now appeared. Roger tore open the note, read its one brief sentence of unconditional surrender. Then he dismissed the men with fees so amazing to them that they thanked him with tears in their eyes. “But you really must be careful,” cautioned Beatrice. “You know we’ve got no money to throw away.” Roger gave her a look that dazzled her. “I see you understand,” said he. “Well, we may be happy in spite of all--all the difficulties.”