“If you found it the best thing for you I’d be glad,” said Mavis. “Sailors must see wonderful and beautiful things,” she went on thoughtfully.
“Perhaps you and Winfried might be sailors together some time,” said Ruby. “That would be nice.”
“Yes,” said Bertrand. “When I got to be captain or something like that, I’ll look him up, and—” but he stopped abruptly. There had been a touch of arrogance in his tone.
Just then Ruby ran off. Mavis was going too, but Bertrand stopped her.
“Mavis,” he said, “Winfried knows all about her. He calls her his princess.”
“I know,” said Mavis.
“And,” Bertrand went on, “he says he knows she’ll never be far away if he wants her. Even ever so far away, over at the other side of the world, out at sea with no land for weeks and months; he says it would be just the same, or even better. The loneliness makes it easier to see her sometimes, he says. I can fancy that,” he went on dreamily, “her eyes are a little like the sea, don’t you think, Mavis?”
“Like the sea when it is quite good, quite at peace, loving and gentle,” she replied. “But still, if you had lived beside the sea as long as we have, Bertrand, you’d understand that there’s never a sure feeling about it, you never know what it won’t be doing next; and the princess, you know, makes you feel surer than sure; that’s the best of her.”
“Yes,” said Bertrand, “the sea’s like Ruby and me. Now just at this time I want more than anything to be good, and never to be selfish or cruel, or—or boasting, or mischievous. But when I get about again with Ruby—even though she’s very good now, and she never was anything like as bad as me—I don’t feel sure but what we might do each other harm and forget about being good and all that; do you see?”
“I think it’s a very good thing that you do not feel sure,” said Mavis. But she was struck by his saying just what Ruby herself had said, and it made her a little anxious.