Sometimes when off guard, he found himself slipping into the manner which seemed more natural, and then he wondered if his policy of aloofness might not savor of the priggish.
Not until they were nearing Honolulu did they refer to the past and then it was Marian and not Stuart who broached the subject.
"We were fortunate in being in Japan in cherry-blossom time," suggested Stuart in a matter of fact fashion, as they strolled on deck at sunset. "We saw it all at its best."
"Cherry-blossom time in Japan—" she echoed musingly. Then suddenly she broke out with an almost impassioned bitterness, "Yes, I suppose we were—fortunate! We are both still in our twenties. I am rich and you are better than that—you are along the way of being famous. And yet it occurs to me that neither of us is precisely happy. We are both outcasts from contentment—just Bedouins in the world's desert, after all."
His question came vaguely and uncomfortably, "What do you mean, Marian?"
She laughed, banishing the gravity from her face.
"Nothing—nothing at all, Stuart," she assured him. "It was just a woman's mood." But after a moment she went on in a voice of greater seriousness: "It seems as good a time as any to tell you that I've come to realize with a wretched guiltiness—how I pulled you into the mess I made of my own affairs. If there were any way of undoing it—"
He interrupted her quickly, "Please don't brood over that, Marian. It's all ended now. You were too confused just then by your own foreground wretchedness to be able to gauge the perspectives."
"One has a right," she declared with self-scorn, "to expect from an adult human being, a reasonable degree of intelligence. I didn't display it to any conspicuous extent."
"You gave way to a moment of panic."