She would not gratify him, and he went on, softly, “Memories of home and affection: and there are so many lonely people in the world.”
She would not answer him. Her eyes were persistently fixed on the distracted waves, torn and buffeted, and hurled from the embrace of the strange white maiden crossing their path.
He changed his tone. “You are in a temper, birdie, your eyes are glittering, and there are angry dashes of red in your cheeks, and you are trembling like a little, frightened dove, or a very successful young actress. Which is it,—dove or actress?”
She burst out upon him with a question. “What are you running about the ship for, telling everybody that I am your wife?”
He suppressed his astonishment, and for some time contemplated her in silence. Then he asked in a low voice, for some emigrant children had suddenly appeared near them, clambering over the anchor and tumbling over each other, “Nina, what do you suppose was the last thought in my mind when I turned into my berth at one this morning?”
“I don’t know—I don’t care to know,” she said, warningly.
“I thought, ‘My little girl is down below.’ When you look out at this,” and he waved his hand toward the vast surging expanse beyond, “and realise the awful loneliness of it, you can in part imagine what that thought was to me.”
Nina shuddered, and uttered a feeble, “Don’t!”
“Other men have homes, wives, children,” he went on, in the same peculiar voice; “ordinarily, I have nothing.”
“You have me,” she said, wildly, “’Steban, don’t talk so.”