"I suppose because of the solemn rite of the first plunge. It somehow makes you clearer. If that is what you mean by romance, why I can agree with you."
I had to be honest. "No, that's not all I mean—only part. I want things to happen to me, not merely sensations. I'm always foolishly expecting some tilt with fortune at the next turn of the road. I suppose you were right that nothing much has happened to me, or I shouldn't hunt so for the physical uplift of the unexpected. I don't want to be merely selfish—I want to help in the world, not to harm. I know that sounds crudely sentimental, but it's hard to say. I mean, for instance, that I don't want distress to prove myself against, but I do want the shock of battle where distress exists."
"Then people must seem to you merely means to an end."
"I suppose it must look that way to you"
"I suppose it must look that way to you," I said uncomfortably. "I'm getting tangled, but I want you to understand—" I hesitated. "When I asked questions in the hurry of the other night, it wasn't any desire to force my way into things that didn't concern me, to make an adventure of what distressed you—you mustn't think that. But it seemed to me that you were in trouble, and I wanted—"
I stopped, for her face had clouded as I spoke until now I dared speak no more, blaming myself that the perplexities that possessed me had again blundered across her pain. Her eyes were upon the ground where her fingers burrowed absently in the sand. When she raised them to mine there were tears in them; but they were tears unshed, and eyes that looked at me kindly.
"Please don't," she said. "I do understand. I would like to let you help, but—there is nothing you can help about, nothing that I can ask or tell."
"Forgive me," I said, and looked away from her.
I think that from that morning we were better friends. Neither of us again made any allusion to the night of alarm; but it was as if both now felt a share in it, a kind of blindfold sympathy not altogether comfortless. Once when we were making a long tour of woods and beaches, she said suddenly: "You don't talk much about yourself, Mr. Crosby."