"Why?"
"Do you really wish to know?" in a voice new to her ear. "Do you wish to know why I want money, lots and lots of it?"
She dropped her arms and turned. The tone agitated and alarmed her strangely. "Why, yes. With plenty of money you could devote all your time to writing; and I am sure you could write splendid stories."
"That was not my exact thought," he replied, resolutely pulling himself together. "But it will serve." By George! he thought, that was close enough.
She did not ask him what his exact thought was, but she suspected it. There was a little shock of pleasure and disappointment; the one rising from the fact that he had stopped where he did and the other that he had not gone on. And she grew angry over this second expression. She liked him; she had never met a young man whom she liked more. But liking is never loving, and her heart was as free and unburdened as the wind. As once remarked, many of the men with whom she had come into contact had been bred in idleness, and her interest in them had never gone above friendly tolerance. Her admiration was for men, young or old, who cut their way roughly through the world's great obstacles, who achieved things in pioneering, in history, in science; and she admired them because they were rather difficult to draw out, being more familiar with startling journeys, wildernesses, strange peoples, than with the gilded metaphors of the drawing-room.
And here were three of them to meet daily, to study and to ponder over. And types as far apart as the three points of a triangle; the man at her side, young, witty, agreeable; Cathewe, grave, kindly, and sometimes rather saturnine; Breitmann, proud and reserved; and each of them having rung true in some great crisis. If ever she loved a man . . . The thought remained unfinished and she glanced up and met Fitzgerald's eyes. They were sad, with the line of a frown above them. How was she to keep him under hand, and still erect an impassable barrier! It was the first time she had given the matter serious thought. The joy of the sea underfoot, the tang of the rushing air, the journey's end, these had occupied her volatile young mind. But now!
"I am dull," said he gloomily.
"Thank you!"
"I mean that I am stupid, doubly stupid," he corrected.
"Cricket will be a cure for that."