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 know it—you'd be blind if you didn't;—but I don't despise him, though perhaps I hate him. That's my own affair. What I wanted to tell you was that I shouldn't have said what I did, the last night on the 'Duumvir,' if I'd thought I'd ever see you again."

"I know that," he said. "You told me so then."

At this she drew an audible quick breath and her eyes opened wide. "I suppose you think I'm merely making it an excuse to speak to you again!"

"Not at all. I meant I understood that you wouldn't have expressed your opinion of me except as a valedictory. You didn't need to explain it again."

"I did need to!" she said in a low voice, fiercely. "You might have thought I knew you were leaving the ship here, and so might see me again. You might have thought I said it only to make you think about me. Girls do that sort of thing sometimes; you might have thought that."

He was nervous; what he had learned from Tinker had dazed him, and now Tinker's daughter irritated him. "Believe me," he said; "I haven't been thinking of it at all, and it's not very probable that I ever shall."