It would have surprised them could they have peeped into the girl’s mind. She liked being alone, being still. There had been considerable strain to keeping up a reputation as a school terror. It had meant being constantly on the alert for an opportunity to misbehave; it meant thinking up plots, living up to an exacting standard of wickedness. The reaction had come with these idle days and she enjoyed it.
Then, too, she loved the vastness of the sea and the sky, between which they made their way. She sat for hours watching white gulls that followed in their wake. She wondered if they were not the souls of the departed, and she conceived one friendly one, which flew quite near them for days, to be the soul of Mrs. Benjamin. Sometimes when she was sure that no one was near she stood in the stern and called out to it.
“Dear Mrs. Benjamin, I know you’re there. Don’t leave me, will you? I love so to watch you circling up there. Is it nice in Heaven?”
She pondered about death a good deal, and about heaven. She had not been able to bear such thoughts since Mrs. Benjamin died, so bitter had been her grief. But there was soothing in the silent vastness, and she came to think of heaven as a sublimated Hill Top with Mrs. Benjamin still teaching the young.
She watched Jerry and Althea pacing the deck together. She noted the way she looked at him—the half-playful wholly tender way she appropriated him. It led the girl to ponder upon love also. Here were two beautiful people who, according to all the rules of play and story, should be making love every minute, in this paradise. Why did the beautiful young man hesitate?
She decided to interview Althea and see what sort of creature she might be. It was not so simple, because Althea was barely aware of Isabelle’s existence, also she was never without Jerry at her side, if either she or Mrs. Brendon could manage it. But there came a chance, when she was alone on deck, and Isabelle hastily took the vacated seat beside her. Althea glanced at her, faintly surprised.
“Are you having a good time on this cruise?” Isabelle opened fire.
“Oh, yes—very. Aren’t you?”
“Not especially. But then I haven’t any handsome young man to play with.”