'I have not dared,' the girl continued, 'to say anything about ... about Fjaerholm. I have never seen anyone in grief like this before, Theo, and it frightens me a little.'
He had left the table, forsaking the farce of breakfast, and was now walking noiselessly backwards and forwards. At the sound of her voice, timid and deprecating, when she spoke the last words he stopped short before her.
'Then I must see her,' he said—'I must see her before I go. I have seen a good deal of ... of grief, Brenda—in other people, I mean—and know its symptoms. Some people are stunned for a time, like a man who has been thrown from a gun-carriage, but it ought not to last very long, not more than twenty-four hours. And then they usually become nervously active. If Mrs. Wylie is like that, you must employ her somehow. Tire her out if you can. But we must take it upon ourselves, now, to have the Admiral buried at Fjaerholm. She is not taking it as I thought she would, and the voyage home, or back to Bergen even, with him on board would send her mad. When he is buried it will be different; she will recover then, under your care.'
'Yes,' replied the girl. 'Yes, we must take it upon ourselves, Theo. I thought of it before.'
'If at any time,' he murmured in his gently suggestive way, 'the matter is discussed—when I am away, I mean—you can say that the whole responsibility rests with me.'
She raised her head and looked at him with a sudden light in her blue eyes.
'I am not afraid of responsibility,' she said tersely.
'No, I think you are afraid of nothing!'
She received this statement as it was made, simply, half playfully, and quite without afterthought.
After a pause he rose, collected his letters, and went on deck, leaving her seated near the small table. She also had letters, and there was a packet of magazines and journals lying unopened near at hand. But she showed no desire to learn news from the outer world. All her interests were centred within four wooden walls just then, and she sat thinking far into the forenoon. Over her head, on the lightly-built deck, the regular tread of Theo Trist acted as an accompaniment to her thoughts. It was so light, that footstep, and yet so steady, seeming to tell of a gentle force which never swerved, never turned back, and never halted.