The Incomplete Amorist

Betty, at bay, raised her head. Lunatics, she knew, could be quelled by the calm gaze of the sane human eye.

She gave one look, and held out both hands with a joyous cry.

"Oh,--it's you! I am so glad! Where did you come from? Oh, how wet you are!"

Then she sat down on the thwart and said no more, because of the choking feeling in her throat that told her very exactly just how frightened she had been.

"You!" Temple was saying very slowly. "How on earth? Where are you staying? Where's your party?"

He was squeezing the water out of sleeves and trouser legs.

"I haven't got a party. I'm staying alone at a hotel--just like a man. I know you're frightfully shocked. You always are."

"Where are you staying?" he asked, drawing the chain in hand over hand, till a loose loop of it dipped in the water.

"Hotel Chevillon. How dripping you are!"

"Hotel Chevillon," he repeated. "Never! Then it was you!"

"What was me?"

"That I was sheep-dog to last night in the forest."

"Then it was you? And I thought it was the lunatic! Oh, if I'd only known! But why did you come after me--if you didn't know it was me?"

Temple blushed through the runnels of water that trickled from his hair.

"I--well, Madame told me there was an English girl staying at the hotel--and I heard some one go out--and I looked out of the window and I thought it was the girl, and I just--well, if anything had gone wrong--a drunken man, or anything--it was just as well there should be someone there, don't you know."

"That's very, very nice of you," said Betty. "But oh!"--She told him about the lunatic.

"Oh, that's me!" said Temple. "I recognise the portrait, especially about the hat."

He had loosened the chain and was pulling with strong even strokes across the river towards the bank where his coat lay.

"We'll land here if you don't mind."

"Can't you pull up to the place where I stole the boat?"

He laughed: "The man's not living who could pull against this stream when the mill's going and the lower sluice gates are open. How glad I am that I--And how plucky and splendid of you not to lose your head, but just to hang on. It takes a lot of courage to wait, doesn't it?"