"Sir!" Marianne protested, her pride stung.

"Do not be offended. I mean the mother of my son to continue to enjoy the position which is hers by right of birth and beauty. You may remain here until you are quite recovered and when you wish to leave one of my ships will take you wherever you wish to go."

She smiled again, with an unintentional touch of coquetry.

"Why must we talk of this tonight? I am still very tired and my thoughts are a little confused. Tomorrow I shall be better and we can consider together—"

He seemed to be on the point of saying something but suddenly thought better of it and instead bowed deeply in the eastern fashion and murmured quickly: "Permit me to bid Your Highness a good night."

"But—" Marianne began in some bewilderment. Then she broke off, understanding the reason for his sudden change of attitude. Trembling with joy, she watched the door thrust open by a masterful hand and Jason stepped into the room.

She realized at once the reason for Corrado's withdrawal and made no attempt to detain him. It would not be fitting for Turhan Bey to pay more than a brief courtesy visit to his guest, the Princess Sant'Anna. In fact, she had ceased to be aware of his presence at all. Her eyes, her heart and her whole mind were focused on the man who had just entered.

The two men, however, greeted one another with the utmost politeness and Jason's voice sounded unwontedly deferential for a slave owner as he said: "I have to thank you, Turhan Bey, for your advice and counsel. If I may, I should like to come and discuss it with you shortly. I must see you before I leave."

"Come whenever you like, Mr. Beaufort. I shall be expecting you."

He went away at once after that. But Marianne had grasped only one thing from this exchange of civilities. Jason had spoken of leaving! Almost before the door had closed behind the prince, she had framed the question—and made up her mind.

"You are leaving? Then I am coming with you."

Jason walked unhurriedly up to the bed and, bending, took her hand and dropped a swift kiss on it. Then, still holding it between his own, he looked at her with a smile which did not reach his eyes or smooth out the anxious creases from his brow.

"We have always agreed that I was to go, and that it would be tonight," he said bluntly, yet with as much gentleness as he could.

"As to coming with me, you know quite well that is impossible."

"Why? Because of my condition? But that is all over! I am quite well, I assure you! To go with you, I have only to be carried down to the landing stage and from there a boat will take us straight to the Sea Witch. Surely you can carry me that far?" she added, tenderly teasing him. "I am not very heavy."

But his face held no hint of a smile.

"Yes, that would be easy enough, but your health is not the only difficulty."

"Then what is it?" she cried angrily. "Your own feelings? You don't want to take me, is that it?"

Her face was very flushed and her eyes a little too bright, as though with a fever. Jason tightened his clasp on her hands, which felt suddenly burning hot to his touch.

"I cannot take you," he corrected her firmly but very gently. "For one thing, you are not as strong as you think and it will be several days yet before you can leave your bed. You have been through a perilous ordeal and the doctor is adamant. But that is not the main reason. I cannot take you because it is quite simply impossible. Turhan Bey has been with you. Did he say nothing?"

"Should he have? I have only just woken up and had my supper. He only came in to say good evening…"

"Then I'll explain what has happened."

Sitting on the edge of the bed to be nearer to her, Jason gave Marianne a rapid sketch of what Gracchus and O'Flaherty had discovered.

"Our host has had inquiries made in the city during the day," he said, "which was perfectly natural since the brig bore his colors and was supposed to belong to him. He didn't like that story of a man dying suddenly of the cholera, or the speed with which the body was burned."

"Why not? So far as I can gather, cholera isn't exactly unusual here."

"No, but it's more usual in summer. And if you have sufficient influence, there's nothing simpler than to get hold of a body and dress it up appropriately and then burn it in a hurry. Turhan Bey thinks it is a ploy invented by the English to keep the vessel under observation, and he knows what he's talking about. So far it's certainly succeeded brilliantly."

"But then you can't go—you will have to wait! For forty days at least."

Her simple pleasure in the fact did nothing to lighten Jason's frown. Moving closer to her, he let go her hands and, taking her by the shoulders instead, spoke earnestly into her face.

"My darling, you don't understand. I must go and go now. Sanders is waiting for me at Messina so that we can try the Gibraltar passage together. If I want to join him, I will have to do what I failed to do the other night. I must steal my ship and escape that way."

"But that is madness! How will you manage without a crew? She's not a fishing boat!"

"I know that just as well as you do. I managed to get together enough men to work the ship out of Constantinople the other night. I'm better off today. Craig O'Flaherty is waiting at Galata with a few men he's managed to round up from the taverns there. They're not first-rate seamen but they are seamen of a sort, Europeans, too, who are tired of the east. And if you will entrust him to me, I'll take young Gracchus also. He wants to sail with me."

"Gracchus?"

Marianne felt a bitter pang in her heart. So Gracchus, too, wanted to leave her? In the time since she had first begun to put down roots in French soil, the urchin from the rue Montorgueil, the grandson of the laundress of the rue de la Revolte, had become much more than a servant to her. He had been a faithful friend, one she could trust and rely on. His devotion to her had been absolute. But it had not taken Jason long to win some of his heart, and Gracchus loved him almost as much as he loved Marianne and admired him deeply. Then the voyage aboard the Sea Witch had finally shown the youthful coachman the path of his dreams. The sea, with all its beauty and its tricks, its splendors and its perils, had become a real vocation and, remembering the boy's eagerness in the skirmish with the English frigates off Corfu, Marianne thought that she had no right to stand in his way.

"Take him, then," she said quickly. "I give him to you because I know he will be much happier with you. But why must you go so soon, Jason? Why not wait a little while—only a few days, so that I can—"

"No, Marianne. It's impossible. I cannot wait. In any case, I shall have to go secretly. There will be risks, fighting, perhaps, for the English will not let me sail out of the harbor without giving chase. I don't want to expose you to those risks. When you are quite better, you can go quietly aboard a Greek ship with Jolival and sail peacefully back to Europe. Once there, you have enough friends among seafaring men to find a vessel willing to dare the English blockade and carry you across the Atlantic."

"I'm not afraid of danger. Nothing can frighten me as long as I'm with you."

"You alone, perhaps, but aren't you forgetting, Marianne? You are no longer alone. Have you forgotten the child? Do you want to expose him when he's no more than a few hours old, to the perils of the sea, of gunfire and the risk of shipwreck? This is war, Marianne."

She broke free of his tender clasp and fell back on her pillows. Her face had gone very pale and there was a painful tightness in her chest. The child! Did he have to remind her? And what need had Jason to trouble himself about the little bastard? Did he seriously imagine she was going to take it with her to that other life, which was to be all clean and fresh and new? That she was going to bring up Damiani's child with his, the children that she longed to give him? In her uncertainty, she burst out angrily to gain time: "It is not war! Even here at the ends of the earth we know that there has been no formal declaration of war between Britain and the United States."

"Certainly. War has not been declared, but incidents are becoming more and more frequent and it will be only a matter of weeks. Mr. Canning knows that. He'd not have hesitated to impound my brig if she hadn't been protected by Turhan Bey's colors. Would you rather it caught me here and left me rotting in an English prison while my friends and fellow countrymen were fighting?"

"I want you to be free and happy… but I want to keep you with me."

It was a cry of despair and in the same instant Marianne had cast herself on Jason's chest and was burying her face in his coat while her thin arms—still so pitifully thin and the skin almost transparent—encircled his broad shoulders.

He held her to him, grieving for the hurt he had been forced to cause her once again, cradling her like a child while his hand caressed the soft curls at the nape of her neck.

"You can't keep me like that, my heart. I am a man, a seaman, and I must live according to my nature. Besides… would you truly love me if I were content to hide behind your skirts when danger threatened? Would you love a coward without honor?"

"I should love you anyhow…"

"No, you wouldn't. You're deceiving yourself, Marianne. If I were to listen to you, my sweet, a day would come when you would blame me for my cowardice. You'd throw it in my face with scorn and contempt. And you would be right. As God is my witness, I'd give anything to be able to stay with you, but I must choose America."