“No. I mean particularly strange and significant.”
“Why?”
“Because my friends are in the habit of telling me (and each other) that the sea is my only love. They were always chaffing me because they couldn’t see or guess in my life at any woman, open or secret. . .”
“And is that really so?” she inquired negligently.
“Why, yes. I don’t mean to say that I am like an innocent shepherd in one of those interminable stories of the eighteenth century. But I don’t throw the word love about indiscriminately. It may be all true about the sea; but some people would say that they love sausages.”
“You are horrible.”
“I am surprised.”
“I mean your choice of words.”
“And you have never uttered a word yet that didn’t change into a pearl as it dropped from your lips. At least not before me.”
She glanced down deliberately and said, “This is better. But I don’t see any of them on the floor.”