great difference in my life.'

"'I know how you always devoted yourself to her,' I said.

"'I had made up my mind never to marry,' he went on. 'How could
I marry?--for it would have been like turning her out of doors.
She was too ill and helpless and despondent to live by herself,
and had I brought a third person into the family it would have
been misery all round.'

"Still I said nothing.

"'Jess,' he said suddenly, 'don't you understand? Can't you
understand?'

"In fact, I did understand very well. It explained a heap of
things--why he had always acted so strangely--sometimes so
devoted to me, sometimes so distant; crazy to hold my hand one
day and avoiding me the next. It was no wonder he had made me
utterly desperate and piqued me into accepting the captain. Then
he said: 'Jess, Jess!' like that; and 'for God's sake, was it too
late?'

"I couldn't trust myself to speak and I could feel my lips
trembling. I didn't sob or anything, but the tears just rolled
down my cheeks. Wasn't it a dead giveaway? It's awful to care
for a man as much as that. I thought it was splendid of him that
he didn't try to kiss me. He simply took my hand and pulled off
the captain's ring and said I had to give it back to him at once.
Then I broke down altogether and began to cry like a baby, while