"Yes, as much as I can."
"I don't wonder. I'm beginning to understand that there must be something very satisfying in being the Czar of this little Kingdom,—it's really the only way to feel the full power of wealth, unless you work and control great interests and feed your vanity like that Democracies worship the monied man, I know, but there is really a touch of the old feudal system in life on a yacht like this. Officers and men, forty of them, are your slaves. It's "Yes, sir; No, sir; Come aboard, sir; I'll make it so, sir," all day long, and, unlike a mere world, the very yacht can be ordered to change her course, put in or put out, at your imperial command. Yes, I begin to feel the fascination of the life you've chosen."
She said all this thoughtfully, disguising the rank impertinence of it under a sort of naïve admiration.
It puzzled Franklin. He was too simple and direct to get her point of view and not willing to believe that he was being gratuitously "cheeked." "You've got me wrong," he said. "I live on the sea because I like it and because I hate cities and society and newspapers and their gross publicity. That's all."
She knew that he was speaking the truth. She knew also that her elaborate sarcasm had missed fire. She tried again. The little devil was still on her shoulder. "Oh, I see," she said, acting astonishment. "You're like the little boy who builds a hut in the back yard and forces himself to believe that he's hundreds of thousands of miles away from home. You come to sea to dodge the responsibilities of real life. You float lazily about on the water like a sportsman and leave the earth to be run by mere men. Well, I daresay there's something in it. Hullo, there goes the first bugle. I must go and dress."
She nodded and slipped away chortling, perfectly certain that she had let Franklin see how very little she thought of him, and on the way down to her suite she flung the little devil away and paid her companion a visit with all the sympathy and tenderness of a young Madonna.
She was right. Franklin felt the cut of her whip on his conscience. Many times recently, during lonely hours, he had cursed himself as a waster of time and opportunity and wondered how much longer he was going to be content to be numbered amongst the drones. All the same he bitterly resented being flicked by this girl, herself the queen of drones, who, of all the women alive, had good reason to thank her stars for his sportsmanship. And he went below angry, dissatisfied and indignant. By jove, he would get one back for this.
His chance came after dinner. He left Malcolm in the drawing-room waiting for the bridge table to be set, heard the Victrola on deck and went out to find Beatrix all alone, dancing like the spirit of spring. Ida Larpent, seeing something in his eyes that drew her out of her chair, followed him and hid. He went up to Beatrix. "Dance with me," he said and took her rather roughly in his arms. He felt the urge of holding her as he had never felt it before. His very anger fired his passion. He would show this unbroken thoroughbred that he was a man as well as a sportsman. And so he held her tight, mad with the gleam of her shoulders and the scent of her hair, danced her breathless and, as the music stopped, imprisoned her in his arms and kissed her lips again and again.
Ida Larpent nearly screamed. The pain of her jealousy was unbearable.
Beatrix fought herself free and stood panting against the rail. And as she stood there with heaving breasts and her hand on her mouth, that unforgivable sentence which had burned itself on her vanity seemed to stand out in letters of fire on the deck house. "If you and I were the only two living people on a desert island and there was not the faintest hope of our ever being taken back to the world, I would build you a hut at the farthest end of it and treat you as a man." This assault, this attack, was all the more nauseating because of its apparent cold-bloodedness, because it was made by the man who had dared to say those words to her. For a moment, with the blood in her head, she was overcome with a desire to cry out for servants and order them to kill that man. All that was imperious in her nature craved for instant punishment. Then, looking at the blaze in Franklin's eyes and mistaking it for the beast in him, she mastered herself and turned cold.