The girl looked up into his face inquiringly, and then laughed consciously. "I am really becoming frightened by your power to understand," she said, only half jokingly. "I do mean to make a personal application. I want to express myself individually, but, being a woman, I cannot find the opportunity. If I really had character I'm sure that I should force the opportunity."
Huntington realized that in hesitating to answer her question he had been wiser than he knew. The seriousness which appeared from time to time on the girl's face, then, was not a passing mood, but rather the index of warring emotions. An unguarded word at this moment might do much injury to a nature which was striving to find itself.
"Do you know yet what form you wish your individuality to take?" he asked cautiously.
"Not exactly," was the frank response. "What I object to, is that a girl isn't allowed to become interested in anything that is worth while. She is given her education and 'brought out,' after which, whether she likes it or not, she seems to be placed in a position of waiting for some man to come along to marry her. Why can't she be allowed to do something, just as a boy is, until she finds out whether she wants to marry or not?"
"That would be a fatal error!" Huntington explained with mock gravity, hoping to lighten the serious turn the conversation had taken. "If any such idea gained ground marriage would become the exception rather than the rule. How many girls do you think would ever marry if they were permitted to find any other real interest in life?"
"But I'm serious, Mr. Huntington," Merry protested, showing that she felt hurt by his flippancy. "I couldn't bear to be a nonentity all my days. Think of realizing one's own ambitions only by marrying a man who could fulfil them! I could not be happy unless I contributed my share to the real life which we jointly lived."
"You could do it," Huntington said with conviction, "but not every woman could.—See that old man bowing to us. Suppose we go and speak with him. Do you mind?"
"Every one is so courteous here," she exclaimed as they crossed the narrow road. "I never pass one of the natives without receiving a greeting of some kind, and the children are forever shyly forcing flowers or fruit upon me. It makes one love the place."
The old man was overjoyed to have attracted attention. He hobbled forward with difficulty as they approached, and bowed as low as his infirmities would permit.
"You are welcome to Bermuda," he said with a cracked, high-pitched voice. "We are pleased to have strangers visit us."