of delight; he had taken her arm, he had even had her in his arms during a wild bluster of wind; but always the inevitable kiss had been delayed, had been averted; and only her eager afterthoughts had made romance of their meagre acquaintance.  Yet now, when they were alone, together, when every nerve in her body seemed tense with desire for him, he was somehow aloof—­not constrained (for then she would have been happy, at the profoundly affecting knowledge that she had carried the day), but unsympathetically and unlovingly at ease.  She could not read his face:  in his manner she read only a barren kindness that took all and gave nothing.  If he didn’t love her she need not have come.  It would have been better to go on as she had been doing, dreaming of him until—­until what?  Jenny sighed at the grey vision.  Only hunger had driven her to his side on this evening—­the imperative hunger of her nature upon which Keith had counted.  He had been sure she would come—­that was unforgivable.  He had welcomed her as he might have welcomed a man; but as he might also have welcomed any man or woman who would have relieved his loneliness upon the yacht.  Not a loved friend.  Jenny, with her brain restored by the gentle breeze to its normal quickness of action, seemed dartingly to seek in every direction for reassurance! and she found in everything no single tone or touch to feed her insatiable greed for tokens of his love.  Oh, but she was miserable indeed—­disappointed in her dearest and most secret aspirations.  He was perhaps afraid that she wanted to attach herself to him?  If that were so, why couldn’t he be honest, and tell her so?  That was all she wanted from him.  She wanted only the truth.  She felt she could bear anything but this kindness, this charming detached thought for her.  He was giving her courtesy when all she needed was that his passion should approach her own.  And when she should have been strong, mistress of herself, she was weak as water.  Her strength was turned, her self-confidence mocked by his bearing.  She trembled with the recurring vehemence of her love, that had been fed upon solitude, upon the dreariness in which she spent her mere calendared days.  Her eyes were sombrely glowing, dark with pain; and Keith was leaning towards her as he might have leant towards any girl who was half fainting.  She could have cried, but that she was too proud to cry.  She was not Emmy, who cried.  She was Jenny Blanchard, who had come upon this fool’s trip because a force stronger than her pride had bidden her to forsake all but the impulse of her love.  And Keith, secure and confident, was coolly, as it were, disentangling himself from the claim she had upon him by virtue of her love.  It seemed to Jenny that he was holding her at a distance.  Nothing could have hurt her more.  It shamed her to think that Keith might suspect her honesty and her unselfishness.  When she had thought of nothing but her love and the possibility of his own.