This time the figure stirred, the head drooped in assent.

“Yes,” she said.

Again the circling arm tightened, and the man’s lips touched her own, again and again.  The very repetition aroused her.

“And you will sail with me in ten days?”

Fully awake was Florence Baker now, fully conscious of all that had happened and was happening.

“Yes,” she said.  “The sooner the better.  I want to have it over with.”  A moment longer she sat still as death; then suddenly the mood of apathy departed, and in infinite weakness, infinite pathos, the dark head buried itself on the man’s shoulder.  “Promise me,” she pleaded brokenly, “that you will be kind to me!  Promise me that you always will be kind!”

CHAPTER XXVI

LOVE’S SURRENDER

Scotty Baker was not an adept at concealing his emotions, and he stared in unqualified surprise at the long figure in brown which of a sudden intruded into his range of vision.  The morning paper upon his knees fluttered unnoticed to the floor of the porch.

“Ben Blair, by all that’s good and proper!” he exclaimed to the man who, without a look to either side, turned up the short walk.  “Where in heaven’s name did you come from?  I supposed you’d gone home a week ago.”

Blair stopped at the steps, and deliberately wiped the perspiration from his face.

“You were misinformed about my going,” he explained.  “I changed hotels, that was all.”

Scotty stared harder than before.

“But why?” he groped.  “I inquired of the clerk, and he said you had gone by an afternoon train.  I don’t see—­”

Ben mounted the steps and took a chair opposite the Englishman.

“If you will excuse me,” he said, “I would rather not go into details.  The fact’s enough—­I am still here.  Besides—­pardon me—­I did not call to be questioned, but to question.  You remember the last time I saw you?”

Scotty nodded an affirmative.  He had a premonition that the unexpected was about to happen.

“Yes,” he said.

Ben lit a cigar.  “You remember, then, that you made me a certain promise?”

Scotty threw one leg over the other restlessly.  “Yes, I remember,” he repeated.

The visitor eyed him keenly.  “I would like to know if you kept it,” he said.

Scotty felt the seat of his chair growing even more uncomfortable than before, and he cast about for an avenue of escape.  One presented itself.

“Is that what you stayed to find out?” he questioned in his turn.

Ben blew out a cloud of smoke, and then another.

“No, not the main reason.  But that has nothing to do with the subject.  I have a right to ask the question.  Did you or did you not keep your promise?”

The Englishman’s first impulse was to refuse point-blank to answer; then, on second thought, he decided that such a course would be unwise.  The other really did have a right to ask.