"Listen to this, Louis. I thought I'd like to read it to you," she said, and read, "'Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. And this—listen, 'Let me not look for allies in life's fight, but to my own strength'; and here's the best bit of all, 'Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone; but let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.' I wish so much I could have found that before father died and read it to him."
"Oh—poetry," he said contemptuously; "a lot of high falutin' nonsense—and by a nigger too! What's that someone said? 'Intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.' That's a good description of a poet."
Another time she spoke of St. Brigid, the Bride of Christ.
"Who's she?" he asked contemptuously.
"The Irish saint." He interrupted with a long tirade against Home Rule which proved, to his satisfaction, that St. Brigid was also "high-falutin' nonsense." A pamphlet of Shaw's she found in the saloon he told her not, on any account, to read.
"A damned Socialist—a vegetarian—a faddist," he said excitedly, and she led the conversation away from books, though he brought it back several times to explain to her the jokes in "Punch" which he said would have to be put into her head with a hammer and chisel, since she was a Scot.
But in spite of puzzlement and divergences she was intensely happy. After the solitude of Lashnagar every day was full of thrilled interest to her. The many people, the changes of temperature as the boat went south, the shoals of porpoises tumbling in the blue water; the strange foods, the passing ships were all amazements to her and the fact that her thoughts had, for the first time, found a tangible resting-place like homing pigeons alighting at their cot, together with her absorption in Louis, all gave her a sense of security.
Louis, on the other hand, though he was trying hard to keep content, realized that the very fact he had to try meant a fight was coming. And his inflated sense of being a very fine fellow indeed in her eyes made it impossible for him to be honest as he had been at first, and tell her that he had caught sight of his enemy seeing to the edge of his sword, the priming of his pistols. He could not ask her for help now—he could not be less than a hero now! He would fight it out alone. Both of them had yet to realize that life is not a static condition: both of them had to realize that lives are interdependent.
At Gibraltar happened something that was to have far-reaching effects. She was watching the frowning Rock; Louis was pointing out the little threatening barbettes as they drew inshore slowly. Out in the stream—very much out—lay a Norddeutscher Lloyd ship at anchor.
"Every inch of this water is mined," he told her. "A touch from switches up on the Rock would blow the whole lot of us to Kingdom Come. The bally old German out there knows that."