His eyes were the first to fall, but in them she knew what she had
read. Now the sunlight had fallen so low that it lay on her like a
garment of light--she seemed some daughter of Hesperus, glorified. The
waning afternoon had grown cooler and several blue-white clouds went
careening overhead. She looked at them.

"How beautiful!" she said. Then she looked at him again with her
steady eyes. "You wished to talk, you said."

Jack nodded.

"Yes, I wish to, but I--I don't know exactly how to say it."

She was smiling now. "How may I help you?"

He shook his head doggedly.

"I am a sailor, Miss Wellington."

"You mean I am to hear plain sailor talk?" she quoted. "Good. I am
ready."

He began with the expression of a man taking a plunge.

"Miss Wellington, I could say a great deal so far--so far as I am
concerned, that I have no right to say, now. . . . But--are you going
to marry Prince Koltsoff?"

She started forward and then sank back.

"You must not ask that," she said.

"I know--I understand," he said rapidly, "but--but--you mustn't marry
him, you know."

"_Must n't!_"

"Miss Wellington, I know, it is none of my business. And yet--Don't
you know," he added fiercely, "what a girl you are? I know. I have
seen! You are radiant, Miss Wellington, in spirit as in face. Any man
knowing what Koltsoff is, who could sit back and let you waste yourself
on him would be a pup. Thornton, of the _Jefferson_, has his record.
Write to Walker, _attache_ at St. Petersburg, or Cook at Paris, or
Miller at London--they will tell you. Why, even in Newport--"

Jack paused in his headlong outburst and then continued more
deliberately.

"It is not for me to indict the man. I could not help speaking because
you are you. I cannot do any more than warn you. If I transgress, if
I am merely a blundering fool--if you are not what I take you
for--forget what I have said. Send me away when we return."

She had been listening to him, as in a daze. Now she shook her head.

"I shall not do that," she said. "Did you take employment with us to
say what you have said to me?"

"No."

She hesitated a moment.

"I suppose all men of Koltsoff's sort are the same," she said musingly.
"I am not quite so innocent as that. We are wont to accept our
European noblemen as husbands with no question as to the wild oats,
immediately behind them--or without considering too closely the wild
oats that are to be strewn--afterwa