The ominous silence persisted.
“I don't ask you to forgive me. It is not a thing which can be forgiven. Tell them I was insane—and jumped overboard. That will be the truth. I am a lunatic.”
He lurched through the door. In that desperate moment, in the whirl of his emotions, there seemed to be no other way out of his horrible predicament. He had grown to love the girl with all the consuming passion of his soul, realizing fully his blind folly at the same time. He had built no false hopes. As to speaking of that love—even betraying it by a glance—he had sheathed himself in the armor of reserved constraint; he had been sure that he sooner would have gone down on his hands and knees and bayed that silver moon from the deck of the yacht Olenia than do what he had just done.
“Captain Mayo! Wait!”
He waited without turning to look at her. Her voice was not steady, but he could not determine from the tone what her emotions were.
“Come back here!”
She was obliged to repeat the command with sharper authority before he obeyed. He lowered his eyes and stood before her, a voiceless suppliant.
“Why did you do that?” she asked. It was not the contemptuous demand which he had been fearing. Her voice was so low that it was almost a whisper.
“I don't know,” he confessed.
The violin sang on; the moon shone in at the door; two strokes, like golden globules of sound, from the ship's bell signaled nine o'clock. Only the rhythm of the engines, as soothing as a cat's purring, and the slow roll of the yacht and the murmuring of the parted waves revealed that the Olenia was on her way through the night.
“I don't know,” he repeated. “It doesn't excuse me to say that I could not help it.”
And he understood women so little that he did not realize that he was making the ages-old plea which has softened feminine rancor ever since the Sabine women were borne away in their captors' arms and forgave their captors.
She stared at him, making
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