“Won't you sit out here--with me?” He spoke hesitantly. “That is, unless you are too tired to visit.”
“There aren't any chairs,” said he. “Perhaps I could find--”
“I don' mind.” She sank to the floor; leaned wearily against the rail. He settled himself in a corner.
“I couldn't sleep either. You see--Miss Hui--Miss Fei”--he broke into a chuckle of embarrassment--“honest I don't know what to call you.”
The unexpected touch of boyish good humor moved her nearly to a smile. Boyish he was, sitting with his feet curled up, stabbing at the deck with his jackknife, coatless, collarless, his thick hair tousled, blushing pleasantly.
“My frien's call me Hui,” she replied simply.
“Oh--really! May I--If you would--of course I know that--but my friends call me Rocky. The whole thing is Rockingham Bruce Kane. But....”
His face fell a very little; but quickly he recovered himself.
“You must have wondered--I suppose it seems as if I've done a rather crazy thing--it _must_ seem so...” She murmured, “Oh, no!”
“Attaching myself to your party this way---at such a difficult time. I know it was a pretty impulsive thing to do, but....”
His voice trailed into silence. For a brief moment this wild act seemed, however different in its significance to himself, of a piece with his other wild acts. It was, perhaps, like all those, merely ungoverned egotism. Her voice broke sweetly in on this moment of gloomy reverie.
“We know tha' you woul' help us if you coul'. An' you were so won'erful.”
“If I only could help! You see when I spoke that way to you--I mean telling you I loved you--”
“No. We won't. Except just this. I was beside myself. But even then, or pretty soon afterward, I knew it was just plain selfishness.”
“No--just this! Of course you don't know me. What you do know is all against me--”
“You will never forget. But even if you were some day to like me more than you could now, I know it would take a long time. I've got to earn the right to be really your friend first. I'm going to try to do that. I've started all over--to-day---my life, I mean. I'm just simply beginning again. There's a good long scrap ahead of me. That's all about that! But please believe that I've got a little sanity in me.”
“I have. Jumping overboard like that, and swimming back to you--it wasn't just crazy impulse, like so many of the things I've done. You see, my father knows you and your father--yes, I mean the terrible trouble you're in. Oh, everything comes to him, sooner or later. All the facts. You have to figure on that, with the pater. He--well, he wanted me to stop thinking about you. He was afraid I'd be writing to you, or something. You see, he'd watched us talking there by the fire. And he told me about this--this dreadful thing. And then I had to come back. Don't you see? I couldn't go on, leaving you like this. Of course, it's likely enough I'm just in the way here--” She was smiling wearily, pathetically, now.