led with delight the
little traits that proclaimed her only woman after all, such as the toss
of the head which flung back the cloud of hair, and the search for the
pin. She was woman, my kind, on my plane, and the delightful intimacy of
kind, of man and woman, was possible, as well as the reverence and awe in
which I knew I should always hold her.

She found the pin with an adorable little cry, and I turned my attention
more fully to my steering. I proceeded to experiment, lashing and
wedging the steering-oar until the boat held on fairly well by the wind
without my assistance. Occasionally it came up too close, or fell off
too freely; but it always recovered itself and in the main behaved
satisfactorily.

"And now we shall have breakfast," I said. "But first you must be more
warmly clad."

I got out a heavy shirt, new from the slop-chest and made from blanket
goods. I knew the kind, so thick and so close of texture that it could
resist the rain and not be soaked through after hours of wetting. When
she had slipped this on over her head, I exchanged the boy's cap she wore
for a man's cap, large enough to cover her hair, and, when the flap was
turned down, to completely cover her neck and ears. The effect was
charming. Her face was of the sort that cannot but look well under all
circumstances. Nothing could destroy its exquisite oval, its well-nigh
classic lines, its delicately stencilled brows, its large brown eyes,
clear-seeing and calm, gloriously calm.

A puff, slightly stronger than usual, struck us just then. The boat was
caught as it obliquely crossed the crest of a wave. It went over
suddenly, burying its gunwale level with the sea and shipping a bucketful
or so of water. I was opening a can of tongue at the moment, and I
sprang to the sheet and cast it off just in time. The sail flapped and
fluttered, and the boat paid off. A few minutes of regulating sufficed
to put it on its course again, when I returned to the preparation of
breakfast.

"It does very well, it seems, though I am not versed in things nautical,"
she said, nodding her head with grave approval at my steering
contrivance.

"But it will serve only when we are sailing by the wind," I explained.
"When running more freely, with the wind astern abeam, or on the quarter,
it will be necessary for me to steer."

"I must say I don't understand your technicalities," she said, "but I do
your conclusion, and I don't like it. You cannot