"You're a strong swimmer—aren't you?" he said tenderly. "But then there isn't any safe and easy crossing to the isles of freedom. It's no wonder most people don't get further than gazing and longing."
"Probably I shouldn't," confessed Susan, "if I hadn't been thrown into the water. It was a case of swim or drown."
"But most who try are drowned—nearly all the women."
"Oh, I guess there are more survive than is generally supposed.
So much lying is done about that sort of thing."
"What a shrewd young lady it is! At any rate, you have reached the islands."
"But I'm not queen of them yet," she reminded him. "I'm only a poor, naked, out-of-breath castaway lying on the beach."
He laughed appreciatively. Very clever, this extremely pretty young woman. "Yes—you'll win. You'll be queen." He lifted his champagne glass and watched the little bubbles pushing gayly and swiftly upward. "So—you've cast over your reputation."
"I told you I had reached the beach naked." A reckless light in her eyes now. "Fact is, I had none to start with. Anybody has a reason for starting—or for being started. That was mine, I guess."
"I've often thought about that matter of reputation—in a man or a woman—if they're trying to make the bold, strong swim. To care about one's reputation means fear of what the world says. It's important to care about one's character—for without character no one ever got anywhere worth getting to. But it's very, very dangerous to be afraid for one's reputation. And—I hate to admit it, because I'm hopelessly conventional at bottom, but it's true—reputation—fear of what the world says—has sunk more swimmers, has wrecked more characters than it ever helped. So—the strongest and best swimmers swim naked."
Susan was looking thoughtfully at him over the rim of her glass. She took a sip of the champagne, said: "If I hadn't been quite naked, I'd have sunk—I'd have been at the bottom—with the fishes——"