She asked about Williams and Sanders, but when she saw the fun die out of his smiling eyes and a look as of pain light in their depths, she cried hastily, “No, no, don’t let’s talk about that! Let’s change the subject. Are you going as captain of a vessel this summer?”
“No,” he answered, almost pathetically. “It’s me for the dory and trawl-hauling again. I guess Old Heneker thought I used vessels too roughly to risk giving me another command. But he’s promised to give me a chance of a vessel next spring, so that’s encouraging.”
“You intend remaining at sea then?” she ventured somewhat apprehensively.
“Sure thing!” answered McKenzie. “There’s nothing else I can do and there’s nothing else I care to do. Seafaring is my hobby and my profession, and I do not wish anything better.”
“Wouldn’t you care to have a shore occupation? Something connected with ships?”
“Some day, yes!” he replied, “but not yet. Some day when it does not pay me to go to sea or when I’ve made enough to keep away from it. But I have a home and a mother to keep and it is only by fishing and navigating vessels that I can make the money. I couldn’t make enough at any other occupation. I wouldn’t care to be an office clerk and I don’t want to be a shore laborer. What could I do ashore worth while? Nothing!”
Her face fell a little at this, but Donald failed to notice it. He was gratifying his artistic sense of proportion and his appreciation of beauty in regarding the lovely roundness of her bare forearms and the perfect sweep of shoulders and neck. What a glorious head of hair she had!—he mused as he gazed thoughtfully on its wavy, coiled tresses with a sheen on them where they caught the light like the sun on a raven’s wing. She was very, very pretty this Nova Scotia lassie, he thought, but with his silent admiration came a recurrent pang of fear that someone other than he would call her “wife.” He talked away, and while he talked he sub-consciously tried to imagine possessing this charming girl for his own; to slip his arms around those perfectly moulded shoulders, and, looking into those wide blue eyes, slowly press her body and her lips to his. It was an enchanting thought—a fancy to set his blood afire; to realize his heart’s desire, to have this wonderful, virile, glorious creature in his arms and to hear her whisper, “I love you!”
They switched from the relation of storm happenings to a description of Cuba. He seemed inspired by her company, and as he dilated on the beauties of the sapphire seas, the palms, the dazzling sunlight, and the ancient glories of Old Havana, she saw in him an artist, a romanticist, and a nature-lover, drawing on a clear and retentive memory for the painting of a word picture which his masterly telling limned before her imaginative eyes. She lay back on the sofa cushions and gazed at his features dreamily, and as he talked she felt a strange thrill in her heart and he appeared then to her as her Knight Splendid. She pictured him in shining armor—a Conquistadore in morion and cuirass—a caballero of Royal Spain—a cavalier as intrepid, as brave, and as chivalrous as those of whom he was talking in his relation of Cuba’s history, and she could picture him in fancy leaving her for the conquest of a new world with her glove in his helmet and clear purpose and courage burning in his dark eyes.
“Those are glorious latitudes,” he was saying. “Warm, yet cool with the steady Trade wind forever blowing and ruffling the sea into little waves which sparkle in the dazzling sunlight. As the ship rushes along the schools of flying fish leap out almost from the curl of the bow wave, and with their wings glistening like mother-of-pearl in the sun they slip into the blue water again to be followed by another school. And those palms! I think the palm is a most beautiful tree! There is something graceful about them which delights the eye as they bend and sway to the wind with their fronds rustling and sighing in accompaniment to the murmur of the surf on the white sand beaches. It’s a rare tree, the palm, and the only trees which compare with them for beauty, in my mind, are our own Canadian spruce and pine.”
Ruth admitted to herself that she was in love with Donald then. But when he ceased talking and she lost the spell of his eyes and voice, cold reason would intervene and endeavour to stifle the feeling within her. “Love him! Love him! Love him!” Desire and the woman’s heart urged, but Reason came with a repressive “No! No!” and as she wavered between the two, Reason would conquer and Justice and Honor would murmur, “Play the game fairly. Tell him it cannot be!”