"I don't know what you mean," answered the girl. "You say you've got to talk to me, and you act—." She stopped.
"You don't know what I mean?" repeated Goodwin. "I'll have to tell you, then."
They had come to a pause under the jib-boom of the silent ship. She waited for him to go on, servile to the still mastery of his mien.
"That night the night I come to the mission for the first time," went on Goodwin, "when you loaned me the book, I quit my ship to keep close to you. That ain't nothin'; the ship was a terror, anyway. But I seen you, and, girl, I couldn't get you out o' my head. You was all right the next night, when I went along with you to your car; it wasn't just because the missionary feller set you at me, neither. What's gone wrong with me since?"
He asked the question mildly, with a tone of gentle and reasonable inquiry.
"I haven't said anything was wrong with you," Answered the girl sullenly. "I don't have to answer your questions, anyway."
"I reckon you do these questions," said Goodwin. "What is it, now? Am I different to what you reckoned I was, or what? I never set up to be anythin' but just plain man. Tell me what I'm shy of. Are you scared you'll have to to marry me?"
"Oh!" The girl shrank away from him.
"That's it, is it? Well, you don't need to be." His voice was bitter. "I'd never ha' dared to ask you before, an' now I wouldn't, anyway. See? But I know, all the same, if I wasn't just a blasted sailor if I was a storekeeper or a rich man I c'd have ye. Why, damme, I c'd have ye anyway!"
She had backed before him; and now she was against the wall, uttering a small moan of protest.