did I get track of him until weeks later. He had married
the woman and then found her out. That's all cleared off the slate,
though. She's been married and divorced three times since then."

"Did you expect to see him over here?"

"In Shanghai? No. The sight of him rather knocked me about. You
understand? It was his place to make the first sign. He was in the wrong,
and he has known it all these seven years."

"No," said Jane, "it was your place to make the first advance. If you had
been a comrade to him in his boyhood he would never have been in the
wrong."

"But I gave him everything!"

"Everything but love. Did you ever tell him a fairy story?"

"A fairy story!" Cleigh's face was the essence of bewilderment.

"You put him in the care of a lovable old dreamer, and then expected him
to accept life as you knew it."

Cleigh rumpled his cowlicks. A fairy story? But that was nonsense! Fairy
stories had long since gone out of fashion.

"When I saw you two together an idea popped into my head. But do you care
for the boy?"

"I care everything for him--or I shouldn't be here!"

Cunningham relaxed a little more in his chair, his eyes still closed.

"What do you mean by that?" demanded Cleigh.

"I let you abduct me. I thought, maybe, if I were near you for a little I
might bring you two together."

"Well, now!" said Cleigh, falling into the old New England vernacular
which was his birthright. "I brought you on board merely to lure him after
you. I wanted you both on board so I could observe you. I intended to
carry you both off on a cruise. I watched you from the door that night
while you two were dining. I saw by his face and his gestures that he
would follow you anywhere."

"But I--I am only a professional nurse. I'm nobody! I haven't anything!"

"Good Lord, will you listen to that?" cried the pirate, with a touch of
his old banter. "Nobody and nothing?"

Neither Jane nor Cleigh apparently heard this interpolation.

"Why did you maltreat him?"

"Otherwise he would have thought I was offering my hand, that I had
weakened."

"And you expected him to fall on your shoulder and ask your pardon after
that? Mr. Cleigh, for a man of your intellectual attainments, your stand
is the biggest piece of stupidity I ever heard of! How in the world was he
to know what your thoughts were?"

"I was giving him his chance," declared Cleigh, stubbornly.

"A yacht? It's a madhouse," gibed Cunningham. "And this is a conv