I know as well as you that a common seaman was little suited to be your husband--I have always known it from the time we were first engaged, when we stood before Van Spyck's portrait in Amsterdam.

That was the sort of man, I knew very well, whom you ought to have had for a husband.
I saw it again, as I have seen it always, when you made comparisons between the North Star and my poor brig--" "Salve!" she exclaimed, passionately, unable to control herself any longer--"what rubbish are you talking?
Do you not know perfectly well that if you had been an admiral itself you never would have been greater in my eyes than you are now, and always have been as a simple pilot?
And pray, whom was I thinking of when I was looking at Van Spyck?
why, of whom but of you ?--thinking that the man called Salve Kristiansen, who stood behind me, was just the one to have done what Van Spyck did.

Or when I was admiring the North Star was I not thinking then too: If you, Salve, were in command of her, they would see what she could really do with a proper man on board?
What possible interest do you suppose I could have in the North Star, except in connection with you?
Were not you, poor skipper of the Apollo, worth more, a thousand times more to me, than a hundred North Stars with all their bravery ?" When she spoke like this it was impossible not to believe every single word of what she said, and Salve's expression while she had been speaking had gradually changed to one of inexpressible happiness.

So it was really he, and he alone, who had been the hero of her life! and he stretched out his arms to her, as though, like Alcibiades of old, he would end the discussion by clasping her to his heart and carrying her straight off with him to his home.

But he was arrested by the deep repelling seriousness with which she continued-- "No, Salve!--it is not which that stands between us, however ingeniously you may have discovered it--it is not that,--it is something else.