How curiously had his face altered, how shadowy it had grown, effacing the charm of youth, in it.
The slight amusement with which she had become conscious of her own personal exclusion grew to an interest tinged with curiosity.
The interest continued, but when his silence became irksome to her she said so very frankly. His absent eyes, still clouded, met hers, unsmiling.
"I hate the sea," he said.
"You--hate it!" she repeated, too incredulous to be disappointed.
"There's no rest in it; it tires. A man who plays with it must be on his guard every second. To spend a lifetime on it is ridiculous--a whole life of intelligent effort, against perpetual, brutal, inanimate resistance--one endless uninterrupted fight--a ceaseless human manoeuvre against senseless menace; and then the counter attack of the lifeless monster, the bellowing advance, the shock--and no battle won--nothing final, nothing settled, no! only the same eternal nightmare of surveillance, the same sleepless watch for stupid treachery."
"But--you don't have to fight it!" she said, astonished.
"No; but it is no secret--what it does to those who do. … Some escape; but only by dying ashore before it gets them. That is the way some of us reach Heaven; we die too quick for the Enemy to catch us."
He was laughing when she said: "It is not a fight with the sea; it is the battle of Life itself you mean."
"Yes, in a way, the battle of Life."
"Oh, you are morbid then. Is there anybody ever born who has not a fight on his hands?"
"No; only I have known men tired out, unfairly, before life had declared war on them."
"Just what do you mean?"
"Oh, something about fair play--what our popular idol summarises as a 'square deal'." He laughed again, easily, his face clearing.
"Nobody worth a square deal ever laments because he hasn't had it," she said.
"I dare say that's true, too," he admitted listlessly.
"Mr. Siward, exactly what did you mean?"
"I was thinking of men I knew; for example a man who through generations has inherited every impulse and desire that he should not harbour--a man with intellect enough to be aware of it, with decency enough to desire decency. … What chance has he with the storms which have been brewing for him even before he opened his eyes on earth? Is that a square deal?"
The troubled concentration of her face was reflected now in his own; the wind came whipping and flicking at them from league-wide tossing wastes; the steady thunder of the sea accented the silence.
She said: "I suppose everybody has infinite capacity for decency or mischief. I know that I have. And I fancy that this capacity always remains, no matter how moral one's life may be. 'Watch and pray' was not addressed to the guilty alone, Mr. Siward."