"The sea's breaking more sharply, and we'd get uncommonly wet before we hammered round yonder head. There's an inlet on this side of it where we ought to find good shelter."
"The trouble is that if you stay there long you'll be too late for the directors' meeting. Besides, I'm under the impression that I've seen you run an open sea-canoe before as hard a breeze as this."
"They can't have the meeting without me, and if it's necessary they can wait," Vane answered impatiently. "I've had to. Many an hour I've spent cooling my heels in corridors and outer offices before the head of the concern could find time to attend to me. No doubt it was part of the game, done to impress me with a due sense of my unimportance."
"It's possible," Carroll laughed.
"Besides, you can drive one of those big Siwash craft as hard as you can this sloop; that is, so long as you keep the sea astern of her."
"Yes; I dare say you can. After all, you hadn't any passengers on the occasion I was referring to. I suppose you feel you have to consider them?"
Vane colored slightly.
"Naturally, I'd prefer not to land Mrs. Marvin and the child in a helpless condition; and I understand they're feeling the motion pretty badly."
Kitty Blake made her appearance in the cabin entrance, and Vane smiled at her.
"We're going to give you a rest," he announced. "There's an inlet close ahead where we should find smooth water, and we'll put you all ashore for a few hours until the wind drops."
There was no suspicion in the girl's face now. She gave him a grateful glance before she disappeared below with the consoling news.
A quarter of an hour later Vane closed with the beach, and a break in the hillside, which was dotted with wind-stunted pines, opened up. While the two men struggled with the mainsheet, the big boom and the sail above it lurched madly over. The sloop rolled down until half her deck on one side was in the sea, but she hove herself up again and shot forward, wet and gleaming, into a space of smooth green water behind a head. Soon afterward, Vane luffed into a tiny bay, where she rode upright in the sunshine, with loose canvas flapping softly in a faint breeze while the cable rattled down. They got the canoe over, and when they had helped Mrs. Marvin and her little girl, both of whom looked very wobegone and the worse for the voyage, into her, Vane glanced around.
"Isn't Miss Blake coming?" he asked.
"She's changing her dress," explained Mrs. Marvin, with a smile. She glanced at her own crumpled attire as she added: "I'm past thinking of such things as that!"
They waited some minutes, and then Kitty appeared in the entrance to the cabin. Vane called to her.
"Won't you look in the locker, and bring along anything you think would be nice? We'll make a fire and have supper on the beach—if it isn't first-rate, you'll be responsible!"
A few minutes later they paddled ashore, and Vane landed them on a strip of shingle. Beyond it a wall of rock arose, with dark firs clinging in the rifts and crannies. The sunshine streamed into the hollow; the wind was cut off; and not far away a crystal stream came splashing down a ravine.
"There's a creek at the top of the inlet," Vane told them, as he and Carroll thrust out the canoe, "and we're going to look for a trout. You can stroll about or rest in the sun for a couple of hours, and if the wind drops after supper we'll make a start again."
They paddled away, with a fishing-rod and a gun in the canoe, and it was toward six o'clock in the evening when they came back with a few trout. Vane made a fire of resinous wood, and Carroll and Kitty prepared a bountiful supper. When it was finished, Carroll carried the plates away to the stream; Mrs. Marvin and the little girl followed him; and Vane and Kitty were left beside the fire. She sat on a log of driftwood, and he lay on the warm shingle with his pipe in his hand. The clear green water splashed and tinkled upon the pebbles close at his feet, and a faint, elfin sighing fell from the firs above them. It was very old music: the song of the primeval wilderness; and though he had heard it often, it had a strange, unsettling effect on him as he languidly watched his companion. There was no doubt that she was pleasant to look upon; but, although he did not clearly recognize this, it was to a large extent an impersonal interest that he took in her. She was not so much an attractive young woman with qualities that pleased him as a type of something that had so far not come into his life; something which he vaguely felt that he had missed. One could have fancied that by some deep-sunk intuition she recognized this fact, and felt the security of it.
"So you believe you can get an engagement if you reach Vancouver in time?" he asked at length.
"Yes."
"How long will it last?"
"I can't tell. Perhaps a week or two. It depends upon how the boys are pleased with the show."
Vane frowned. He felt very compassionate toward her and toward all friendless women compelled to wander here and there, as she was forced to do. It seemed intolerable that she should depend for daily bread upon the manner in which a crowd of rude miners and choppers received her song; though there was, as he knew, a vein of primitive chivalry in most of them.
"Suppose it only lasts a fortnight, what will you do then?"
"I don't know," said Kitty simply.
"It must be a hard life," Vane broke out. "You must make very little—scarcely enough, I suppose, to carry you on from one engagement to another. After all, weren't you as well off at the restaurant? Didn't they treat you properly?"
She colored a little at the question.
"Oh, yes. At least, I had no fault to find with the man who kept it or with his wife."
Vane made a hasty sign of comprehension. He supposed that the difficulty had arisen from the conduct of one or more of the regular customers. He felt that he would very much like to meet the man whose undesired attentions had driven his companion from her occupation.
"Did you never try to learn keeping accounts or typewriting?" he asked.
"I tried it once. I could manage the figures, but the mill shut down."
Vane made his next suggestion casually, though he was troubled by an inward diffidence.
"I've an idea that I could find you a post. It looks as if I'm going to be a person of some little influence in the future, which"—he laughed—"is a very new thing to me."
He saw a tinge of warmer color creep into the girl's cheeks. She had, as he had already noticed a beautifully clear skin.
"No," she said decidedly; "it wouldn't do."
Vane knit his brows, though he fancied that she was right.
"Well," he replied, "I don't want to be officious—but how can I help?"
"You can't help at all."
Vane saw that she meant it, and he broke out with quick impatience:
"I've spent nine years in this country, in the hardest kind of work; but all the while I fancied that money meant power, that if I ever got enough of it I could do what I liked! Now I find that I can't do the first simple thing that would please me! What a cramped, hide-bound world it is!"
Kitty smiled in a curious manner.
"Yes; it's a very cramped world to some of us; but complaining won't do any good," She paused with a faint sigh. "Don't spoil this evening. You and Mr. Carroll have been very kind. It's so quiet and calm here—though it was pleasant on board the yacht—and soon we'll have to go to work again."
Vane once more was stirred by a sense of pity which almost drove him to rash and impulsive speech; but her manner restrained him.
"Then you must be fond of the sea," he suggested.
"I love it! I was born beside it—where the big, green hills drop to the head of the water and you can hear the Atlantic rumble