She gasped as it struck her face, and then she laughed.
"You see," he warned her. "The next time it may be worse."
"It's better than that stuffy cabin," she answered, feeling an exhilaration in the salt spray and the wind. There was comfort in his presence, too, though she hardly acknowledged it to herself. It had needed this storm and the danger to bring back to her all her old ideals of manliness, cherished in her girlhood in the little seaport, but weakened by her later acquaintance with a widely different life.
She looked up suddenly and said:
"Can't we still be friends, Tom—just friends?"
"I'm your friend," he answered. He did not look toward her as he spoke.
"You wouldn't speak to me yesterday."
"I was a fool," he said, still looking away from her.
"It hurt me," she said. She paused, but he did not speak, and she went on: "We can always be friends, then, can't we?"
For a moment he did not speak or look at her.