Alix’s hand opened and settled into his. Alan went on:
“Words talk to the mind, but through my hand my body talks to yours in a language that was old before words were born. If I am full of dreams of you and a desert island, I don’t have to tell you about it, because you are with me. The things I want, you want. There are no other things in life; for while I hold you, our world is one and it is all ours. Nothing else can reach us.”
For a while they sat silent, then Alix recovered herself.
“After all,” she said, “we’re not on a desert island, but on a ship, with eyes in every corner.”
Alan leaned toward her.
“But if we were, Alix! If we were on a desert island, you and I—”
For a moment Alix looked into his burning eyes. She felt that there was fire in her own eyes too—a fire she could not altogether control. She disengaged herself and sprang up. Alan rose slowly and stood beside her. He did not look at her parted lips and hot cheeks; he had suddenly become languid.
“That’s it,” he drawled—“eyes in every corner. I wonder how many morals would stand without other people’s eyes to prop them up?”
Alix left him. She felt baffled, as though she had tried desperately to get a grip on Alan, and her hand had slipped. She felt that it was essential to get a grip on him. She had never played the losing side before, and she was troubled.
Premonition does not come to a woman without cause. Toward the end of the voyage Alix faced, wide-eyed, the revelation that the stakes of the game she and Alan had played were body and soul.