an," she said meekly.

He stood looking down at her in the faint moonlight that slanted in
through the open door of the cabin, and all at once something in the
intentness of his gaze awakened her to a sudden vivid consciousness of
the situation--of the hour and of her absolute aloneness with him.
Their solitude was as complete as though they had been cast on a desert
island.

Magda felt her pulses throb unevenly. The whole atmosphere seemed
sentient and athrill with the surge of some deep-lying emotion. She
could feel it beating up against her--the clamorous demand of something
hardly curbed and straining for release.

"Michael----" The word stammered past her lips.

The sound of her voice snapped the iron control he had been forcing on
himself. With a hoarse, half-strangled exclamation he caught her up
from where she lay, crushing her slim, soft body in a grip that almost
stifled her, kissing her fiercely on eyes and lips and throat. Then
abruptly he released her and, without a word, without a backward look,
strode out of the cabin and up on to the deck.

Magda sank down weakly on the edge of the narrow bunk. The storm of his
passion had swept through her as the wind sweeps through a tree, leaving
her spent and trembling. Sleep was an impossibility. Ten minutes, twenty
passed--she could not have told how long it was. Then she heard him
coming back, and as he gained the threshold she sprang to her feet and
faced him, nervously on the defensive. In the pale, elusive moonlight,
and with that startled poise of figure, she might well have been the
hamadryad at bay of one of her most famous dances.

Michael looked rather white and there was a grim repression about
the set of his lips. As he caught sight of her face with its mute
apprehension and dilated eyes, he spoke quickly.

"You should be resting," he said. "Let me tuck you up and then try to go
to sleep."

There was something infinitely reassuring in the steady tones of his
voice. It held nothing but kindness--just comradeship and kindness. He
was master of himself once more. For her sake he had fought back the
rising tide of passion. It had no place while they two were here alone
on the wide waters.

He stooped and picked up the blankets, laying them over her with
a tenderness that seemed in some subtle way to be part of his very
strength. Her taut nerves relaxed. She smiled up at him.

"Good-night, Saint Michel," she said simply. "Take care of me."

He s