“But all this,” said Kane, “does not track the fellow across the briny.”

“I am coming to that.”

“You figure that he has taken her—or is taking her—to Anjou?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“In the first place, Kane, he must have decided, in his own mind, that this trip of his across the ocean, with Bessie as a passenger on the Shadow, is his last and only chance.”

“I should say so.”

“And at the end of that voyage lies his fate.”

“Humph! Well?”

“Before he decided to take the terrible risk of capturing Bessie and carrying her away as his prisoner, he must have made up his mind that all outlawry, save that one act upon which his mind was resolved, must be a thing of the past.”

“Perhaps so. Who knows?”

“I think I know. I think I am putting myself in the place of that man. ‘Put yourself in his place’ is a pretty good maxim, when you wish to get at the real inwardness of an act committed by another.”

“I believe that. Go on, please.”

[166]

“When he got away with the Shadow and resolved to capture Bessie, he figuratively took the bit in his teeth.”

“I should say he did.”

“But you must not forget that he could not place himself in a worse position than that in which he already found himself, so far as his future and his desires were concerned. In short, old man, he has thought it all over with great calmness, and, as calmly, he has selected—Bessie, or death.”

“By Jove, Nick!”

“Without her, life has seemed to him not worth the living; and without having first had an opportunity to explain things to her, as they really were, death itself seemed almost impossible. Don’t you understand, that if he had gone away somewhere and killed himself quietly, that all her life Bessie would have thought of him—if she thought of him at all—as a despicable scoundrel?”

“Well, she would have been pretty nearly right.”

“Granted; but not from his standpoint.”

“Well, then——”

“The other side of the picture which he saw was this: He could capture her; he could take her, a captive, aboard the Shadow; he could keep her there, a passenger, a guest, and an unwilling—or, perhaps, a willing—listener to his plea. In either case, she would have heard it. In either case, he would have had an opportunity to explain. In either case, she would be compelled to listen to him, and in either case, she would in the end think not so ill of him as she had thought. He believed that he could prove to her, while she was aboard the pirate cruiser, that[167] he was not all bad; he believed that he could convince her that it was because of true love for her that he had dared to do that thing; he believed that there might be enough romance in her nature to induce her to listen to him under such circumstances, where she would never have done so else; he believed that there was a possibility that she might really love him, and that love would triumph over all obstacles.

“But—and here is the crucial point—he believed that if he failed, that if she refused utterly to listen to him, that is she scorned him, she would at least be led to believe in the purity of his motives, and to think of him after his death as one not so utterly bad as she had pictured him.”

“After his death?”

“Why, yes; for if my idea is at all correct, he means to kill himself at the end of the voyage, if he finds that he cannot win her forgiveness and her love. He is a Frenchman, remember; he is romantic; he has staked his entire fortune, and his life, as well, upon this throw, and if he loses, he will shrug his shoulders and put a bullet through his brains as calmly as he stood upon the deck of the Shadow and told you that if you resisted him, he would shoot.”

“And so, you think——”

“I think—nay, I almost know, that he will take Bessie directly to Anjou—to that château of his. I think he will treat her as an honored guest. I believe that she will suffer no inconvenience, and, least of all do I regard her as in personal danger. And at the end of the cruise of[168] the Shadow, I believe that if she so wills it, he will open wide the way for her to go free.”

Kane was silent for a long time, as were the others; but at last the millionaire raised his head again and spoke.

“Nick,” he said, “there is always a chance that you may be wrong, isn’t there?”

“Yes.”

“Then let us look at both sides of this question.”

“Very well.”

“Suppose that you are all in the wrong?”

“Well?”

“Suppose that your conjectures as to Count............