Quick as
you can!"

Then he looked at Eileen, and for a moment said nothing.

"What's the matter?" she asked anxiously. "Has anything gone wrong?"

"Yes," he said with a half laugh, "I have. I even forgot to lick down
that envelope. How the deuce I'm to explain an empty, unaddressed,
unfastened envelope the Lord only knows!" His manner suddenly changed
and he asked abruptly, "Are you in a desperate hurry to get in? I've
something to say to you."

He paused and looked at her, but she said not a word in reply, not even
to inquire what it was. A little jerkily he proceeded--

"I'm probably making just as great a fool of myself as Belke. But I
couldn't let you go without asking--well, whether I am merely making a
fool of myself. If you know what I mean and think I am, well, please
just tell me you can manage to see yourself safely home--I know it's
only about fifty yards--and I'll go and get that wretched envelope back
from the girl and tell her another lie."

"Why should I think you are making a fool of yourself?" she asked in a
voice that was very quiet, but not quite as even as she meant.

"Let's turn back a little way," he suggested quickly.

She said nothing, but she turned.

"Take my arm, won't you," he suggested.

In the bitterness of his heart he was conscious that he had rapped out
this proposal in his sharpest quarter-deck manner. And he had meant to
speak so gently! Yet she took his arm, a little timidly it is true,
but no wonder, thought he. For a few moments they walked in silence,
falling slower and slower with each step; and then they stopped. At
that, speech seemed to be jerked out of him at last.

"I wonder if it's conceivable that you'd ever look upon me as anything
but a calculating machine?" he inquired.

"I never thought of you in the least as that!" she exclaimed.

The gallant Commander evidently regarded this as a charitable
exaggeration. He shook his head.

"You must sometimes. I know I must have seemed that sort of person."

"Not to me," she said.

He seemed encouraged, but still a little incredulous.

"Then did you ever really think of me as a human being--as a--as a--"
he hesitated painfully--"as a friend?"

"Yes," she said, "of course I did--always as a friend."

"Could you possibly--conceivably--think of me as"--he hesitated, and
then blurted out--"as, dash it all, head over ears in love with you?"

And then suddenly the Commander realised that he had not ma