“Don’t.... Perhaps when Gilbert is better——”
“Oh, no! it’s quite hopeless. You can’t make a new fire with white ashes. Did you ever think we were suited to one another?” She was gazing out at sea. Every now and then a lurch of the boat sent her arm against his, and once a strand of her hair swept his cheek.
He was a little time before he replied. “Claudia, you once said something like that before. You said I might have warned you. Was that fair? It hurt me. Suppose I had said to you, ‘I don’t think Gilbert can make you happy.’ What would you have thought of me? Think how happy and confident you were. And—can anyone interfere in such matters? Are they not questions we must decide for ourselves? I—or anyone—would always be utterly helpless, whatever you chose to do.”
She gave a sigh. “I know. I shouldn’t have believed you.”
The next words seemed to slip out almost against his will. “And you might have thought I was jealous of my friend.”
“Oh, no!” she exclaimed impulsively. “I should never have thought that.”
“I see,” he replied, with a bitterness she had never before heard in his voice. “I was never a real man to you. I was and am only a literary abstraction, an amiable stuffed animal, suitable for friendship, a——”
She lifted startled, amazed eyes to his, but at that instant Littleton’s voice sounded the other side of her.
“I need not ask you if you enjoy the sea, Mrs. Currey? Isn’t it bully? I like it rough, don’t you?”
Just then the spray caught them all, and for the next few minutes they were busy laughingly mopping their faces and coats.