“Listen,” I went on, leaning on an arm extended along the rail. “I’ll tell you your story. I’ve pieced it together and I know what it is. I didn’t know it when I came on board. It puzzled me.”
Her lips moved, but there was no turn of her head or stir of her person.
“Please don’t. I’m—I’m not sure that I could bear it.”
“Why shouldn’t I? You’ve done certain things. Let me give you their interpretation.”
“If I do—” she began, weakly.
I couldn’t allow her to continue.
“I see now the explanation of so many things that bewildered me at first—that made me suffer. That day at Rosyth, for instance, when you went in and left me, you didn’t despise or hate me. You may have been disillusioned—”
“It isn’t the word,” she murmured, still motionless, and looking off at the big white star. “I’d been thinking of you as the kind of man I’d—I’d been looking for so long.”
“And you saw I was less so than any of the others.”
“I’m not saying that. But if you think it was easy to tear up all one’s conceptions by the roots and plant in new ones—however kindly—all at once—”