Hilda was a little at a loss to know how this rather curious speech should be taken. She felt dimly that there was something below the surface, as so frequently there seemed to be when Aunt Marjie spoke; but at first she couldn't imagine what it was.
"So fine and free," Miss Whitcom repeated in the same tone. "They make straight out. But they always turn back."
And then Hilda asked, giving voice to a sudden bold dart of intuitive understanding: "You mean men, Aunt Marjie?"
Whereupon her aunt laughed away the odd impulse of symbolism. "Yes, the men, Hilda. They try to carry us off our feet in the beginning. They want us to believe they're young gods. And they can't understand why some of us are coming to grow sceptical, and why we're beginning to want to try our hand at a few things ourselves."
"He's turning around now!" cried Hilda, who was not paying the very best sort of attention.
"Yes, poor dears," the other persisted. "The other shore would be too far off."
"Oh, much too far!" agreed Hilda, jumping up to wave her hand.
Whatever Aunt Marjie might be getting at, Hilda, for her part, was ever so glad of the sea's prohibitive vastness.