"Malcolm, will you come to Europe with me?"
"Any time," said Malcolm.
"Right. To-morrow night, then. I wish to God I had an aeroplane. We'd get away sooner."
He looked round impatiently. The so-called quay might have been made away back before the Great Wind and carelessly patched together after it. It ran out into a small bay for the use of perhaps a dozen cat-boats, a couple of nice yawls, a very spruce shoal-draught sloop just in, a well put together lark and a number of dirty little power boats belonging to the negro fishermen. Several bankrupt-looking sheds added to the general neglected appearance of the whole scene, which was heightened by three carcasses of dead dories with all their ribs sticking out lying up on the beach and all among dry seaweed and rubbish.
"What's the particular hurry?" asked Malcolm.
Franklin turned upon him. "I'm sick of myself, sick of life, sick of the whole blessed show," he said. "I want to get right away. I want to put all the sea there is between myself and Beatrix. If anybody had told me before I went to the Vanderdykes that a bit of a girl was going to turn me into a first-class fool I'd have called him a sentimental crank."
"I know," said Malcolm. "It all depends on the girl, though. All wise men, all men who fathom the fact in time that life means nothing if it's selfish, fall over each other to be made first-class fools of by the right girl. Besides, who says you've been turned into a first-class fool? You love Beatrix without success. So do I. That doesn't make us fools, either of us. I hold that we have to thank our stars to have met her. The fool part of it would be in not having loved her. That's my view of it. And look here, Pel, old man, don't be quite so ready to call people sentimental cranks who talk about love. What are we here for? What's the use of living without it? Clubs are built for men who have missed the one good thing there is to win in this queer little interlude between something we can't remember and something we're not intended to know."
Franklin listened to this unexpected outburst with a sort of boyish gravity. Malcolm had the knack of saying things that were true, and this that he had just said, with uncharacteristic heat, was dead true. Franklin knew that. Moreover he had the honesty and the courage to say so.
"Quite right, old son. I was talking through my hat as usual. But the difference between you and me is this. You're a poet and when you're turned down you have the safety valve of verse. You can write about it. I'm only a common or garden sporting cove who has to grin and bear it. And when you've got a girl like Beatrix in your blood there isn't much grinning, believe me. Come on. Let's walk and I'll put you up to date."
And away they went arm in arm along the shore while the sun went down.