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“It is so difficult to make you understand,” she cried, distressed.

“I will wait till to-morrow.”

“No, no; if you are to help me in this, you can not do it too quickly.”

We began to walk toward the boat, which had emitted another piercing wail.

“I told you that Duke da Sestos has asked me to marry him, and that I encouraged him. I did. But, oh, so unconsciously.”

“You encouraged him unconsciously? Impossible!”

“It is true, Dick,” she insisted tearfully. “I wished to show him how impossible it was that I could ever care for him–that nothing but a miracle could make me love him. It happened that the steel chest he gave me from the Palazzo stood on the drawing-room table. Quite impulsively I said: ‘When you bring me the casket that fitted into that steel box, I will listen to you.’ I said it lightly, Dick, as a bitter jest. I thought I was asking him to do something quite impossible. To my surprise, to my dismay, instead of being indignant or angry, he took my words quite seriously. He refused to see that I had asked him to accomplish an impossibility. In that intense 127foreign way of his, he kissed my hand, bidding me good-by for the present, but he promised me that, sooner or later, he would return with the casket. I was so astonished I could say nothing. Before I could recover myself he had gone. And if he should find it! Oh, Dick, if he should!”

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I laughed joyously–happily. “He shall not,” I cried, “because I am going to find it myself. And if I do find it, Jacqueline?”

“I shall be so glad,” she said shyly.

“But my book of legends,” I said with affected seriousness. “Am I to give up writing the legend of the clock? I thought I was to persist in my task. Nothing was to turn me from it.”

“But I am giving you this new task, Dick,” she said, laughing happily.

“Yes, yes,” I said, as I leapt aboard at the last moment. “I think I may find time to do this new task for you, and my legend of the clock as well.”

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