I was practically dead.

Then your letter confessing came--" "Wait," she interrupted, "that letter was untrue, false; it was penned under compulsion.

I wrote you again, later, but you had gone, disappeared utterly.

I wanted to explain, but your own people even did not know where you were--do not know yet." He leaned his body against the rail, and looked at her in the dim light.

Her face retained much of its girlish attractiveness, yet its undoubted charms no longer held the man captive.