“I mean that Captain whom you’re not ashamed to be hanging after all day long. Oh, I know about you. I heard how you was found holding him in your arms, the first day that you met him by the tower yonder, after you’d been flirting with him like any street girl, till you brought him to break his leg. Yes, holding him in those arms of yours—nothing less.”
“Oh! how dare you! How dare you!” she murmured, for no other words would come to her.
“Dare? I dare anything. You’ve worked me up to that, my beauty. Now I dare ask you when you’ll let me make an honest woman of you, if it isn’t too late.”
By this time Joan was positively speechless, so great were the rage and loathing with which this man and his words filled her.
“Oh! Joan,” he went on, with a sudden change of tone, “do you forgive me
