But there were times when she
could have wished he were. She felt it to be really due her attractions
that his pulses should quicken for her, and in the interests of
experience she would have liked to see how he would make love if he
really meant it from the heart and not the will.

"It's really an awful bother," she sighed.

"Referring to the little problem of your future?"

"Yes."

"Can't make up your mind whether I come in?"

"No." She looked up brightly, with an effect of impulsiveness. "I don't
suppose you want to give me another week?"

"A reprieve! But why? You're going to marry me."

"I suppose so." She laughed. "I wish I could have my cake, and eat it,
too."

"It would be a moral iniquity to encourage such a system of ethics."

"So you won't give me a week?" she sighed. "All sorts of things might
have happened in that week. I shall always believe that the fairy
prince would have come for me."

"Believe that he HAS come," he claimed.

"Oh, I didn't mean a prince of pirates, though there is a triumph in
having tamed a pirate chief to prosaic matrimony. In one way it will be
a pity, too. You won't be half so picturesque. You remember how
Stevenson puts it: 'that marriage takes from a man the capacity for
great things, whether good or bad.'"

"I can stand a good deal of taming."

"Domesticating a pirate ought to be an interesting process," she
conceded, her rare smile flashing. "It should prove a cure for ENNUI,
but then I'm never a victim of that malady."

"Am I being told that I am to be the happiest pirate alive?"

"I expect you are."

His big hand gripped hers till it tingled. She caught his eye on a
roving quest to the door.

"We don't have to do that," she announced hurriedly, with an
embarrassed flush.

"I don't do it because I have to," he retorted, kissing her on the lips.

She fell back, protesting. "Under the circumstances--"

The butler, with a card on a tray, interrupted silently. She glanced at
the card, devoutly grateful his impassive majesty's entrance had not
been a moment earlier.

"Show him in here."

"The fairy prince, five minutes too late?" asked Ridgway, when the man
had gone.

For answer she handed him the card, yet he thought the pink that
flushed her cheek was something more pronounced than usual. But he was
willing to admit there might be a choice of reasons for that.

"Lyndon Hobart" was the name he read.

"I think the Consolidated is going to have its