“One never minds hearing nice things, I think,” she replied, with a frank smile. They were swinging up and down the windward deck, and as he talked he was acutely aware of her free movements beside him, and of the blow of her skirts to leeward. Her hair, too closely pinned to fly loose, yet seemed to spring from her forehead with the urge of pinioned wings. Life radiated from her, he thought, with a steady, upward flame—not fitfully, as with most people.
“And one doesn't mind questions, does one—from real people?” he continued. “I'm going to ask you lots more, and you may ask me as many as you like. I never talk to people unless they are worth talking to, and then I talk hard. Will you begin, or shall I? I have at least two hundred things to ask.”
“It is my turn, though, I think.” She accepted him on his own ground, with an open and natural friendliness.
“I have only one at the moment, which is, 'Why haven't we talked before?'” and she glanced with a quiet humorousness at the few unpromising samples of the second cabin who obstructed the windward deck.
“Oh, good for you!” he applauded, “aren't they loathly!”
“Oh, no, all right, only not stimulating—”
“And we are,” he finished for her, “so that, obviously, your question has only one answer. We haven't talked before because I haven't seen you before, and I haven't seen you because I have been growling in my cabin—voilà tout!”
“Oh, never growl—it's such a waste of time,” she answered. “You'll see, the second cabin isn't bad.”
“It certainly isn't, now,” rejoiced Stefan. “My turn for a question. Have you relatives, or are you, like myself, alone in the world?”
“Quite alone,” said Mary, “except for a married sister, who hardly counts, as she's years older than I, and fearfully preoccupied with husband, houses, and things.” She paused, then added, “She hasn't any babies, or I might have stayed to look after them, but she has lots of money and 'position to keep up,' and so forth.”