She stretched out both her hands to Jolival in an instinctive gesture to seek his support, and he came to her where she lay on the divan and gripped them in his own. They were icy cold and she was trembling in every limb, but the eyes she lifted to Corrado were full of stars.

"Thank you," she said softly. "Thank you… from the bottom of my heart."

She put out her hand to him but he seemed not to see it. His face as he bowed and left her was closed and set. But Marianne was too happy to consider what he might be thinking at that moment. With the unconscious selfishness of all people in love, she was thinking only of the one who was coming.

She turned to Jolival with a look of alarm.

"I want a mirror," she said. "I must look dreadful—shockingly ugly!"

"Ugly, no. You could never be that—but shocking, certainly. I dare say you're sorry now that you didn't listen to your Uncle Arcadius and try to eat a little more. All the same, it's no bad thing that you should look a trifle peaky. But you must try to be calm. Do you want me to go?"

"No, no! Don't go! Only remember how we parted. Who knows if his long illness has made him think differently about me? I might need you. So don't leave me, my friend, I implore you—besides, it is too late."

Quick footsteps rang out in the next room. A voice spoke sharply, and the sound of it made Marianne's senses swim. It was answered by Donna Lavinia's infinitely gentler tones. Then the curtain was lifted once more. The housekeeper in her black dress appeared and curtsied deeply.

"If it please Your Serene Highness, Mr. Jason Beaufort."

As he strode through the door, the small room seemed to shrink. He was so tall that Marianne thought he must surely have grown since she had seen him last. But otherwise he was unchanged. There was still the same masterful face, the same tanned complexion and dark blue eyes, the same unruly black hair. Neither time nor illness, it seemed, had any power over Jason Beaufort. He had returned from the edge of the grave as much himself as if nothing had happened.

Marianne gazed at him wonderingly, forgetting in an instant all that he had made her suffer, as Mary Magdalen must have looked at the risen Christ, with eyes bright with tears and light.

Unhappily, the object of her gaze was not endowed with the same divine serenity. He stopped dead in the doorway, the anger which had driven him into the room cut off short. He had been told that he was going to meet the "owner" of his beloved brig and had been prepared to tell the thief exactly what he thought of him. But the sight of the two faces before him left him wholly thunderstruck. And since Marianne's voice had suddenly deserted her, it was left to Jolival to break the silence. Releasing the girl's hands, which were quieter now and not so cold, he rose and went to meet the privateer.

"Come in, Beaufort. I'm not sure that you are welcome, but you have certainly been expected."

The vicomte's voice was noticeably lacking in warmth. Jolival was the last man on earth to bear a grudge but it was clear that he had not forgotten the time that he had spent in irons aboard the Sea Witch, along with poor Gracchus, or the sufferings endured by Marianne. It was these that Jolival could not forgive. If he had not known how deeply his young friend loved this man, if he had not seen her pining for him all these weeks, it would have given him a very real pleasure to have thrown him out of the door, and the more so because, although he had said nothing, he, too, had been shocked by the attempted theft. His state of mind was reflected in his greeting. Consciously or unconsciously, he was spoiling for a fight.

But Jason's anger had fallen from him as swiftly as the curtain fell into place behind him. He had been staring at Marianne as though at a ghost but now his eyes left her and swung to Jolival, losing none of their astonishment as they took in the diminutive figure drawn up to its full height before him.

"Monsieur de Jolival," he said at last. "What are you doing here? I thought you were dead."

"Very kind of you, I'm sure," snapped the vicomte. "I don't know who put that idea into your head. That you should picture me working a treadmill for some fat slave owner, that I could understand—but from there to burying me! It if interests you, I am in excellent health."

A faint smile touched Beaufort's lips. "I'm sorry. I ought not to have said that. But all this is so incredible. Try and see it from my point of view. I arrive here, recognize my ship and make a bid to win back my own with the help of a handful of men picked up on the waterfront, whereupon I am fallen on by a gang of screaming ruffians and hauled off to the so-called owner, only to find myself face to face with the two of you—"

His eyes, as though drawn by a magnet, had returned to Marianne, a white figure curled up amid a pile of silken cushions in every shade of green. He stepped around the stove and came to the divan, while she watched him in an agony of apprehension. What was he going to do? He was smiling with what looked like real joy, but his reactions were so unpredictable. Had he forgotten all that had passed aboard his ship, or was the memory of that last, terrible scene between them still with him, ready to stand between them once again?

That had been on board the Sea Witch. Jason had been standing on the quarter deck, watching while Caleb suffered punishment for having tried to kill Dr. Leighton, and Marianne had turned on him, wild with rage, and had snatched the bloody whip from the bosun's hands. She saw again the figure of the pretended Ethiopian hanging by the wrists from the mainmast, limp and unconscious. She heard Jason's voice saying coldly: "What is that woman doing? Take her back to her cabin!"

They had faced one another before the whole ship's company. She had hurled defiance at the man who stood there with a face of stone and madness in his eyes, a man, she knew now, who was even then in the power of a deadly drug. But what memories had the drug left in his mind?

None, perhaps. For in the look that Jason bent on her face she saw all the old fire which she had thought never to see again. A wave of happiness swept over her. Was it possible that the memory of the horrible events off the island of Cythera could have faded like a dream? If no trace of them remained in Jason's mind, how gladly would Marianne erase them from her own.

Jason approached until he could rest one knee on the next divan and, bending, offered her his hand as though in earnest of peace.

"Marianne," he said softly. "They told me you were here and that I should find you but I never thought that it would be so soon. I think I must be dreaming. How is it possible?"

She raised herself from her cushions, her hands, her arms, her whole being reaching out to him with unthinking gladness.

"I'll tell you everything! But you are here! At last! That is what is so wonderful! Come and sit by me. Here, at my side."

With an eagerness that she had not shown for many weeks, she tossed aside the cloth that covered the stove and made room for him among the cushions, her condition quite forgotten. She remembered it too late as she saw Jason draw away from her quickly, white-faced, when the gesture revealed her shape all too clearly.

"So that at least was no dream?" he said bitterly. "That was no nightmare brought about by Leighton's infernal drugs. You are with child—"

The light died out of Marianne's eyes, and Jolival saw that once again all was about to be lost and that she was to be made to suffer yet again. He lost his temper.

"Oh, no!" he said fiercely. "Not again! Beaufort, I've had more than enough of your tantrums, your tragedy airs and your insufferable pride! You no sooner arrive than you begin to set yourself up as judge and jury! You come here out of the blue, in the unedifying character of one who has been caught trying to take what no longer belongs to him—"

"What gives you the idea that my ship no longer belongs to me?" Jason demanded haughtily.

"The law of the sea. Your ship, my good sir, was captured by the Turks and brought here as a prize by one Achmet Reis, the man who had taken her. She was bought from him by the Valideh Sultan, given a complete refit, which she badly needed after a spell in your friend Leighton's hands, and presented by Her Highness to her kinswoman, Marianne. In other words, having permitted that damned doctor of yours to rob Marianne and do his best to murder her in the most hideous manner, you now come here to deprive her of everything she has and dare to get up on your high horse into the bargain when you find her in a condition that does not meet with your approval! Oh, no, my friend, it won't do! It won't do at all!"

Jason shrugged. "I don't understand a word you're saying. Leighton acted like a brigand to me but I had not thought that you had cause for complaint—"

"Oh, hadn't you? You did not know that on the night after Caleb's flogging, while you were snoring in your bed sodden with rum and drugs, he stripped this poor child of all she possessed and set her adrift in an open boat with nothing more than a nightshift and a pair of oars, leaving her wretched maid, Agathe, to be raped by half the crew? If the boat had not been found by a man fishing out of Santorini, Marianne would be dead long ago of thirst, exposure and sunstroke. She was saved in the nick of time. And no thanks to you, as far as I am aware. So kindly moderate your transports and spare us your niceties of conscience. Yes, she is with child. In fact she will be brought to bed at any moment. But although you refused to listen to the facts on board your confounded ship, I swear to God that you shall hear them now, in full, if I have to ask Turhan Bey to have you put in chains!"