"Take my arm, won't you," he suggested.
In the bitterness of his heart he was conscious that he had rapped out this proposal in his sharpest quarter-deck manner. And he had meant to speak so gently! Yet she took his arm, a little timidly it is true, but no wonder, thought he. For a few moments they walked in silence, falling slower and slower with each step; and then they stopped. At that, speech seemed to be jerked out of him at last.
"I wonder if it's conceivable that you'd ever look upon me as anything but a calculating machine?" he inquired.
"I never thought of you in the least as that!" she exclaimed.
The gallant Commander evidently regarded this as a charitable exaggeration. He shook his head.
"You must sometimes. I know I must have seemed that sort of person."
"Not to me," she said.
He seemed encouraged, but still a little incredulous.
"Then did you ever really think of me as a human being—as a—as a—" he hesitated painfully—"as a friend?"
"Yes," she said, "of course I did—always as a friend."