“No, not that, Hal. But a fair fight is one thing and brutality is another. And then, too, they say you’d been drinking.”
He laughed and slid his hand about her arm.
“I give you my word of honor, Laura, all I’d had was just a little nip to take the sea-chill out of my bones. Come, now, look at me, and tell me if I look like a thug and a drunkard!”
He stopped in the deserted road, swung the girl round toward him, and laid his hands on her shoulders. Through the sheer thinness of her dress he felt the warmth of her. The low-cut V of her waist tempted him, dizzyingly, to plant a kiss there; but he held steady, and met her questioning eyes with a look that seemed all candor.
For a long moment Laura kept silence, searching his face. Far off, mournfully the bell-buoy sent in its blur of musical tolling across the moving sea-floor.
“Well, Laura, do I look a ruffian?” asked Hal again, smiling.
Laura’s eyes fell.
“I’m going to believe you, Hal, whatever people say,” she whispered. “I’m sorry it happened at all, but I suppose that’s the way of a man. You won’t do anything like that again, though, will you?”
“No—dear! Never!”
He drew her toward him, but she shook her head and pressed him back. Wise with understanding, from sources of deep instinct, he let her go. But now the fires in his eyes were burning more hotly. And as they once more started down along the road he cast on her a glance of quick and all-inclusive desire.