“O Neil,” groaned the young sailor; “this is all so hard and business-like. Everything goes easily for you. You don’t know what love is.”
A spasm contracted Neil’s features for a few moments, but he smiled sadly directly after.
“Perhaps not,” he said. “Who knows? There, business-like or not, you know I am doing my duty and you have to do yours. Come, sailor, I shall begin to quote Shakespeare to you. ‘Aboard, for shame; the wind sits in the shoulder of your sail, and you are staid for.’”
“But it is so hard, Neil.”
“Life’s duties are hard, man; but we men must do them at any cost. Come, good-bye, and old Shakespeare again—the end of the old man’s speech: ‘To thine own self be true’—and you will be true to the girl you wish to make your wife. Good-bye.”
Neil held out his hand, but it remained untouched for the full space of a minute before it was seized and crushed heavily between two nervous sets of fingers, while the young man’s eyes gazed fixedly in his. Then it was dashed aside. Beck swung himself round and dashed off across the park as hard as he could go, without trusting himself to look back.