communicate with any person on the boat or on shore."

"No; that I will not agree to as a condition."

"Then still you leave it very hard for me."

She only smiled at him again, her slow, deliberate smile; yet there
was in it no trace of hardness or sarcasm. Keen as her mind
assuredly was, as she smiled she seemed even younger, perhaps four
or five and twenty at most. With those little dimples now rippling
frankly into view at the corners of her mouth, she was almost
girlish in her expression, although the dark eyes above,
long-lashed, eloquent, able to speak a thousand tongues into shame,
showed better than the small curving lips the well-poised woman of
the world.

Captain Edward Carlisle, soldier as he was, martinet as he was,
felt a curious sensation of helplessness seize upon him as he met
her, steady gaze, her alluring smile; he could not tell what this
prisoner might do. He cursed the fate which had assigned such a
duty, cursed especially that fate which forced a gallant soldier to
meet so superb a woman as this under handicap so hard. For almost
the first time since they had met they were upon the point of
awkwardness. Light speech failed them for the moment, the gravity
of the situation began to come home to both of them. Indeed, who
were they? What were they to the public under whose notice they
might fall--indeed, must fall? There was no concealing face and
figure of a woman such as this; no, not in any corner of the world,
though she were shrouded in oriental veil. Nay, were she indeed
tied in a sack and flung into the sea, yet would she arise to make