All the same, though he was constantly on the alert, Clement made the most of his opportunities with Heloise. It was for the good of Heloise—and it was extraordinarily attractive for himself. He wasn’t going to marry her. That was absurd.... How could he? Only—only she was decisively and radiantly pretty. The singular glowing curd-whiteness of her skin, the vividness of her beautiful and delicate lips against the coolness of that skin, the clearness and steadiness of her eyes—all these things gave him an eversharpening sense of delight whenever he set eyes on her.
And her step suited his so perfectly. On board ship, one is immensely appreciative of any one whose step suits one perfectly. Her tall figure swung so gracefully, so untiringly, beside him as they walked, no matter if the sea was as smooth as polished glass—which the Atlantic rarely is—or whether there was a “lop” on. She was as physically fit and as hard as he was, and she took the same zest in out-of-door things. He felt a sort of comradeship, a rightness in the fact that they should stride up and down the promenade deck together in such a perfect unison as almost to suggest they were one....
As though they were one!... but, of course, that was idiotic. They weren’t one. There was no suggestion of their being one. One—that meant marriage. And that question didn’t come up. Although, of course, the little lawyer had said ... “Oh, hang the little lawyer!” he muttered.
“Who are you hanging?” asked Heloise, who was near and who had heard the most lethal part of his muttering.
“I was hanging this top-heavy sea,” said Clement genially. “I wanted to show you the captain’s bridge—I’ve got permission—but with this lop....”
“Show me the captain’s bridge—now,” she laughed back. “The lop doesn’t matter—not a hang.”
That was part of her attraction. She really didn’t care a hang about things that made other people uncomfortable. She enjoyed risks. She was daring enough to go anywhere, see everything. They adventured into all the strange and usually unseen parts of that splendid ship, even as far as the boiler room. She was eager, she was interested in everything, she had a zest for life. She was an ideal chum. More and more he began to perceive that she was the ideal chum—anyhow for one particular man. And presently he was saying not “Hang the little lawyer,” but “Hang Henry Gunning.”
Because both had a healthy disregard for exposure, and a healthy regard for fresh air, they became almost the sole occupants of the breezy boat deck. There they sat daily and talked; there in the evenings they sat, and sometimes did not talk.
In their talks they found splendid affinities. They found that they liked so many similar things: not merely sports, books, theaters, the open country and the other solaces of life, but other more significant things. They found that both cared most in life for character: for honesty, straightness, generosity, high-mindedness. They liked intelligent people rather than merely jolly ones. They liked people who did things rather than people who played at doing things. They found that they had a mutual austerity of ideal in their way of looking at problems ... would rather be the losers in anything than win underhand; they would take the difficult path if it was the right one, rather than the easy if it were wrong.
This brought them dangerously near to the core of the matter they were both engaged on, dangerously near Henry Gunning ... yet both instinctively veered away from that.