“It is impossible that he should like me.” She rose quickly.
“You’re going in? Well, fifteen hours in the open air are an opiate. Should you care to go forward first for a moment? I can show you a place where you can look down below; there are two hundred emigrants on board; Norwegians.”
She hesitated, drawing her shawl about her.
“Take my arm; I can guide you better so. It’s dark, and I know the ins and outs.”
She put her hand upon his arm.
He drew it further through. “I don’t want you to be falling down!”
They went forward along the narrow side. Conversation was not easy, they had to make their way round various obstacles by sense of feeling; still Eve talked; she talked hastily, irrelevantly. When she came to the end of her breath she found herself speaking this sentence: “I like your friend Mr. Hollis so much!”
“Yes, Kit is a wonderful fellow; he has extraordinary talent.” He spoke in perfect good faith.
“Oh, extraordinary?” said Eve, abandoning Hollis with feminine versatility, as an obscure feeling, which she did not herself recognize, rose within her.
“If you don’t think so, it’s because you don’t know him. He is an excellent classical scholar, to begin with; he has read everything under the sun; he is an inventor, a geologist, and one of the best lawyers in the state, in spite of his notion about not practising.”