. I shall never forget you for it as long as I live."
There was a note of pathos in her voice. Why did he make it so hard for
her, she thought. Why would he not look in her face and see? Why would
he not let her thank him? "Nothing in the world is so precious to me
as daddy, and never will be," she went on resolutely, driving back the
feeling of injustice that surged up in her heart at his attitude--"and
it is you, Mr. Breen, who have given him back to me. And daddy feels
the same way about it; and he is going to tell you so the minute he sees
you," she insisted. "He has sent you a lot of messages, he says, but
they do not count. Please, now won't you let me thank you?"

Jack raised his head. He had been fingering a tassel on the end of the
sofa, missing all the play of feeling in her eyes, taking in nothing but
the changes that she rang on that one word "gratitude." Gratitude!--when
he loved the ground she stepped on. But he must face the issue fairly
now:

"No,--I don't want you to thank me," he answered simply.

"Well, what do you want, then?" She was at sea now,--compass and rudder
gone,--wind blowing from every quarter at once,--she trying to reach the
harbor of his heart while every tack was taking her farther from port.
If the Scribe had his way the whole coast of love would be lighted and
all rocks of doubt and misunderstanding charted for just such hapless
lovers as these two. How often a twist of the tiller could send them
into the haven of each other's arms, and yet how often they go ashore
and stay ashore and worse still, stay ashore all their lives.

Jack looked into her eyes and a hopeless, tired expression crossed his
face.

"I don't know," he said in a barely audible voice:--"I just--please,
Miss Ruth, let us talk of something else; let me tell you how lovely
your gown is and how glad I am you wore it to-day. I always liked it,
and--"

"No,--never mind about my gown; I would rather you did not like
anything about me than misunderstand me!" The tears were just under the
lids;--one more thrust like the last and they would be streaming down
her cheeks.

"But I haven't misunderstood you." He saw the lips quiver, but it was
anger, he thought, that caused it.

"Yes, you have!"--a great lump had risen in her throat. "You have done a
brave, noble act,--everybody says so; you carried my dear father out on
your back when there was not but one chance in a thousand you would ever
get out alive; you lay in