Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/393

Rh corrupted ending of a once bright life; the north with its clear, untainted purple and pure-shining stars—the virgin years before the fall.

And over her head ever trembled and vanished, trembled and vanished, the little lights on the motionless topmasts and yards.

The strangely subdued girl and her repentant lover paced the deck. They tried to overcome the oppression of air, and sea, and mood, which had held them mute and uneasy in the dog watches. At last they ventured a few sentences of conversation.

"I thought I'd lost you for keeps, Sally." "You came near it. You would have, if it hadn't been for him."

"And to think I suspected him of yellowness. I was a fool."

"Not quite that, dear. Just a foolish boy." "I deserve worse names than that."

"We'll forget them now, Benny boy. But don't you think you ought to say something to him—to make up."

"You bet I ought. I'd eat humble pie now, if it had an assafœtida crust and a castor-oil filling."

Then he added thoughtfully:

"He may be a frog-eater, but he's a real man."

This phrasing she did not quite like, so she returned very slowly:—

"Perhaps, if we tried hard, we could forgive the diet. And as you say, he—is—a—real—man."

The accompanying smile was strangely made up of irony