He did not seem to know the rest of it, and when she had heard the stanza several times Jacinta, who saw Muriel's eyes fixed upon her enquiringly, made a little half-impatient gesture.
"It's the usual sentimental rubbish, though he sings passably well. 'Even the sea birds cannot escape the pains of love,'" she said. "Absurd, isn't it? like most of the men one comes across nowadays, they probably spend all their time in search of something to eat. Still, I suppose—you—would sympathise with the man whose perverted imagination led him to write that song."
Muriel looked at her with a hint of reproach in her big blue eyes, which were very reposeful. "I don't think I ever quite understood you, and I don't now, but I once went to see an English gullery," she said. "There were rows of nests packed so close that one could scarcely pick a way between, with little, half-feathered things in most of them. They all had their mouths open."
Jacinta laughed musically. "Of course," she said. "You are delightful. But never mind me. Go on a little further."
"It was the big gulls I was thinking of," said Muriel gravely. "They didn't fly away, but hung just above us in a great white cloud, wheeling, screaming, and now and then making little swoops at our heads. It didn't seem to matter what happened to them, but any one could see they were in an agony of terror lest we should tread upon some of the little, half-feathered nestlings. I came away as soon as the others would let me. It seemed a cruelty to frighten them."
"It seems to me," said Jacinta, "that you are anticipating, or confusing things considerably, but I'll try not to offend you by making that a little plainer, though, I should almost like to. I'm in quite a prickly humour to-night."
She sat silent a moment or two, while a trace of colour crept in her companion's face, looking out towards the eastern haze, as she had done of late somewhat frequently.
"Yes," she said, reflectively, "I feel that it would be a relief to make you upset and angry. You are so aggravatingly sure of everything, and serene. Of course, that is, perhaps, only natural, after all. You have, in one respect, got just what you wanted, and have sense enough to be content with it."
Muriel turned and looked at her with a trace of bewilderment, for there was an unusual hardness in Jacinta's tone.
"Wouldn't everybody be content in such a case?" she asked.