when he called her up on deck again, ostensibly to catch a
glimpse of Vesuvius breaking and bursting into flame, above _Barra_ and
_Portici_. She knew, however, that slumbering and subterranean fires
other than Vesuvius had erupted into light and life. She could see it
by the new misery on his moonlit face, as she sat beside him. Yet she
sat there in silence; there was so little that she could say.

"Do you know, you've changed, Frank, these last few months!" he at last
essayed.

"Haven't there been reasons enough for it?" she asked, making no effort
to conceal the bitterness of her tone.

"You're not happy, are you?"

"Are _you_?" she asked, in turn.

"Who can be happy, and think?"

She waited, passively, for him to go on again.

"You said you didn't much care what happened, so long as it kept us
together, and left us satisfied."

"Isn't that enough?" she broke in, hotly, yet thrilling with the
thought that he was about to tear away the mockery behind which she had
tried to mask herself.

"No, it isn't enough! And now we're out of the dust of it, these last
few days, I can see that it never can be enough. I've just been
wondering where it leads to, and what it amounts to. I've had a
feeling, for days, now, that there's something between us. What is it?"

"Ourselves!" she answered, at last.

"Exactly! And that is what makes me think you're wrong when you cry
that you'll stoop every time I stoop. Every single crime that seems to
be bringing us together is only keeping us apart. It's making you hate
yourself, and because of that, hate me as well!"

"I couldn't do _that_!" she protested, catching at his hands.

"But I can see it with my own eyes, whether you want to or not. It
can't be helped. It's beginning to frighten me, this very willingness
of yours to do the things we oughtn't to. Why, I'd be happier, even,
if you did them under protest!"

"But what is the difference, if I still _do_ them?"

"It would show me that you weren't as bad as I am--that you hadn't
altogether given up."

"I couldn't altogether give up, and live!" she cried, with sudden
passion.

"But you told me as much, that night in Monte Carlo?"

"I didn't _mean_ it. I was tired out that night; I was embittered, and
insane, if you like! I _want_ to be good! No woman wants sin and
wrongdoing! But, O Jim, can't you see, it's you, you, I want, before
everything else!"

He smote the palms of his hands together, in a