“However they may judge me,” said he, “I’m a failure.  You say you admire me as a man, but you don’t.  It’s just a bit of diplomatic flattery.  I’m a good doctor and surgeon, I’ll admit, but my face is no more repellent than my cowardly nature.  Miss Beth, I hate myself for my cowardice far more than I detest my ghastly countenance.  Yet I am powerless to remedy either defect.”

“I believe that what you term your cowardice is merely a physical weakness,” declared the girl.  “It must have been caused by the suffering you endured at the time of your various injuries.  I have noticed that suffering frequently unnerves one, and that a person who has once been badly hurt lives in nervous terror of being hurt again.”

“You are very kind to try to excuse my fault,” said he, “but the truth is I have always been a coward—­from boyhood up.”

“Yet you embarked on all those dangerous expeditions.”

“Yes, just to have fun with myself; to sneer at the coward flesh, so to speak.  I used to long for dangers, and when they came upon me I would jeer at and revile the quaking I could not repress.  I pushed my shrinking body into peril and exulted in the punishment it received.”

Beth looked at him wonderingly.

“You are a strange man, indeed,” said she.  “Really, I cannot understand your mental attitude at all.”

He chuckled and rubbed his hands together gleefully.

“I can,” he returned, “for I know what causes it.”  And then he went away and left her, still seeming highly amused at her bewilderment.

In the operating room the next day Gys appeared with a rubber mask drawn across his features.  The girls decided that it certainly improved his appearance, odd as the masked face might appear to strangers.  It hid the dreadful nose and the scars and to an extent evened the size of the eyes, for the holes through which he peered were made alike.  Gys was himself pleased with the device, for after that he wore the mask almost constantly, only laying it aside during the evenings when he sat on deck.

It was three days after the arrival of Mrs. Denton and her mother—­whose advent had accomplished much toward promoting the young Belgian’s convalescence—­when little Maurie suddenly reappeared on the deck of the Arabella.

“Oh,” said Patsy, finding him there when she came up from breakfast, “where is Clarette?”

He shook his head sadly.

“We do not live together, just now,” said he.  “Clarette is by nature temperamental, you know; she is highly sensitive, and I, alas! do not always please her.”

“Did she find you in Dunkirk?” asked the girl.

“Almost, mamselle, but not quite.  It was this way:  I knew if I permitted her to follow me she would finally succeed in her quest, for she and the dear children have six eyes among them, while I have but two; so I reposed within an ash-barrel until they had passed on, and then I followed them, keeping well out of their sight.  In that way I managed to escape.  But it proved a hard task, for my Clarette is very persistent, as you may have noticed.  So I decided I would be more safe upon the ship than upon the shore.  She is not likely to seek me here, and in any event she floats better than she swims.”