“Ben, Ben, I love you, I will tell you this once, whether it’s right or wrong. I love you, I love you, I love you!” And she flung her arms round his neck, and drawing down his face to her own covered it with kisses, hot, passionate kisses in which the future, which for her stretched away into eternity, was forgotten.
“I must go. Susy, Susy, if you will not have me, in pity’s name let me go!”
“Go then, go, my darling.”
She drew herself out of his arms firmly, sadly, and they stood for a moment looking into each other’s eyes, only for a moment though, then with a long-drawn sigh she turned away and covered her face with her hands.
He stood a little apart and took a long farewell to all his hopes. Would the picture ever fade from his mind, he wondered. There it all lay before him, blue sea and sky and dark bushland, and the only living thing visible the trembling girl in her simple pink frock, her face hidden in her hands, and the sunlight bringing out lines of gold in her fair hair. So it ended—his month-old romance. To-day he must go back to the old dull routine that makes up the sum of a sailor’s life, and this brief madness must be but a tender memory of the past.
“Susy,” he whispered, “Susy,” but the little figure never raised its head.
“Susy, won’t you wish me good-bye. Say something to me before I go. Must I go?”
He had no hope she would change her mind. He had learned her steadfastness only too well in the last four weeks, only he asked because it gave him the faintest shadow of an excuse for stopping at her side.
“Yes, go, go!” And the command was almost prayerful in its intensity.
“But—but—one word—one word—you—”