“At all events, mate,” she said—“at all events, I'm not a girl.”
“NO!” exclaimed Wilbur, as he filled his pipe. “NO, you're just Moran, Moran of the 'Lady Letty.'”
“And I'll stay that, too,” she said decisively.
Never had an evening been more beautiful in Wilbur's eyes. There was not a breath of air. The stillness was so profound that the faint murmur of the blood behind the ear-drums became an oppression. The ocean tiptoed toward the land with tiny rustling steps. The west was one gigantic stained window, the ocean floor a solid shimmer of opalescence. Behind them, sullen purples marked the horizon, hooded with mountain crests, and after a long while the moon shrugged a gleaming shoulder into view.
Wilbur, dressed in Chinese jeans and blouse, with Chinese wicker sandals on his bare feet, sat with his back against the whale's skull, smoking quietly. For a long time there was no conversation; then at last:
“No,” said Moran in a low voice. “This is the life I'm made for. In six years I've not spent three consecutive weeks on land. Now that Eilert” (she always spoke of her father by his first name), “now that Eilert is dead, I've not a tie, not a relative, not even a friend, and I don't wish it.”
“But the loneliness of the life, the solitude,” said Wilbur, “that's what I don't understand. Did it ever occur to you that the best happiness is the happiness that one shares?”
Moran clasped a knee in both hands and looked out to sea. She never wore a hat, and the red light of the afterglow was turning her rye-hued hair to saffron.
“Hoh!” she exclaimed, her heavy voice pitched even lower than usual. “Who could understand or share any of my pleasures, or be happy when I'm happy? And, besides, I'm happiest when I'm alone—I don't want any one.”
“But,” hesitated Wilbur, “one is not always alone. After all, you're a girl, and men, sailormen especially, are beasts when it's a question of a woman—an unprotected woman.”