times, he would probably have changed from a Captain Kidd into a useful
citizen of the kind you once said you admired."

"Is a woman necessary," she asked, "for the transformation?"

He looked at her so intently that she blushed to the hair clustering at
her temples. She had not meant that her badinage should go so deep.

"It was not a woman," he said slowly, "that brought me back to America."

"Oh," she exclaimed, suffused, "I hope you won't think that curiosity"
--and got no farther.

He was silent a moment, and when she ventured to glance up at him one of
those enigmatical changes had taken place. He was looking at her gravely,
though intently, and the Viking had disappeared.

"I wanted you to know," he answered. "You must have heard more or less
about me. People talk. Naturally these things haven't been repeated to
me, but I dare say many of them are true. I haven't been a saint, and I
don't pretend to be now. I've never taken the trouble to deceive any one.
And I've never cared, I'm sorry to say, what was said. But I'd like you
to believe that when I agreed with with the sentiments you expressed the
first time I saw you, I was sincere. And I am still sincere."

"Indeed, I do believe it!" cried Honora.

His face lighted.

"You seemed different from the other women I had known--of my generation,