"He has sent you a lot of messages, he says, but they do not count.

Please, now won't you let me thank you ?" Jack raised his head.

He had been fingering a tassel on the end of the sofa, missing all the play of feeling in her eyes, taking in nothing but the changes that she rang on that one word "gratitude." Gratitude!--when he loved the ground she stepped on.

But he must face the issue fairly now: "No,--I don't want you to thank me," he answered simply.
"Well, what do you want, then ?" She was at sea now,--compass and rudder gone,--wind blowing from every quarter at once,--she trying to reach the harbor of his heart while every tack was taking her farther from port.
If the Scribe had his way the whole coast of love would be lighted and all rocks of doubt and misunderstanding charted for just such hapless lovers as these two.

How often a twist of the tiller could send them into the haven of each other's arms, and yet how often they go ashore and stay ashore and worse still, stay ashore all their lives.
Jack looked into her eyes and a hopeless, tired expression crossed his face.
"I don't know," he said in a barely audible voice:--"I just--please, Miss Ruth, let us talk of something else; let me tell you how lovely your gown is and how glad I am you wore it to-day.