“If she is, I’m sorry.”
“You simply couldn’t have—”
“Well, I don’t know. I remember perfectly, I was frantic at not finding you.”
Ashamed of the warmth his words brought welling up about her heart—“And you didn’t think much of the women you did find. Yes, I remember what you said about the women who go on this sort of journey. But you’re wrong, you see. I know them now.”
He made no answer. Just stood there, hands in pockets, arctic cap rolled back, so that it sat turban-like on the crown of his head; the perplexity in the face giving way to a somewhat dogged good-temper that declined to be ruffled by the incident.
“Some of the women are just as—are more deserving of being treated well than I am.”
“Oh, I dare say some of them are all right.” He leaned against the railing, his square chin lifted, and he studied the man in the crow’s-nest—but he went on saying in that cool way, “I’m not denying that I would have broken any number of bones rather than not get to you in time to save you from coming to harm.”
“Oh, don’t say it! That’s exactly what Mrs. Locke thinks.”
“Oh, Mrs. Locke!”—he moved his shoulders impatiently—“I’m sorry if she got hurt. But in my opinion neither of you ought to have been there. Don’t think my view about that is altered by your having come off scot free so far. You see somebody did suffer.”
“Mrs. Locke.”