With her hands clasped in her lap, she gazed at the sand at her feet.
"Without a minute to think of it," she said to herself, presently,--"without any consideration at all.

And now it is done! It was not like me.

I do not know myself.

But yes!" she exclaimed, speaking so that any one near might have heard her, "I do know myself.

I said it because I was afraid, if I did not say it then, I should never be able to say it." If Captain Horn could have seen her then, a misty light, which no man can mistake, shining in her eyes as she gazed out over everything into nothing, he might not have been able to confine his proposition to a strictly business basis.
She sat a little longer, and then she hurried away to finish the work on which she had been engaged; but when Mrs.Cliff came to look for her, she did not find her packing provisions for the captain's cruise, but sitting alone in one of the inner caves.
"What, crying!" exclaimed Mrs.Cliff.