"I shouldn't deserve to be here if I had forgotten," she answered
meaningly. "Perhaps you forget the sword of the Turk?" she added.

He laughed a little, his cheek flushed with pleasure. "I shouldn't
deserve to be here if I remembered--in the way you mean," he answered.

Her face was full of pleasure. "The worst of it is," she said, "I never
can pay my debt. I have owed it for eleven years, and if I should live
to be ninety I should still owe it."

His heart was beating hard and he became daring. "So, thou shalt save my
life," he said, speaking in French. "We shall be quits then, thou and I."

The familiar French thou startled her. To hide the instant's confusion
she turned her head away, using a hand to gather in her hair, which the
wind was lifting lightly.

"That wouldn't quite make us quits," she rejoined; "your life is
important, mine isn't. You"--she nodded towards the Narcissus--"you
command men."

"So dost thou," he answered, persisting in the endearing pronoun.

He meant it to be endearing. As he had sailed up and down the world,
a hundred ports had offered him a hundred adventures, all light in the
scales of purpose, but not all bad. He had gossiped and idled and
coquetted with beauty before; but this was different, because the nature
of the girl was different from all others he had met. It had mostly been
lightly come and lightly go with himself, as with the women it had been
easily won and easily loosed. Conscience had not smitten him hard,