She is no Juliet, thank the Lord; and thank the Lord I
am no Romeo. And yet I go up alone on the freezing poop, and under
my breath chant defiantly at the snorting gale, and at the graybeards
thundering down on us, that I am a lover. And I send messages to the
lonely albatrosses veering through the murk that I am a lover. And I
look at the wretched sailors crawling along the spray-swept bridge
and know that never in ten thousand wretched lives could they
experience the love I experience, and I wonder why God ever made
them.
"And the one thing I had firmly resolved from the start," Margaret
confessed to me this morning in the cabin, when I released her from
my arms, "was that I would not permit you to make love to me."
"True daughter of Herodias," I gaily gibed, "so such was the drift of
your thoughts even as early as the very start. Already you were
looking upon me with a considerative female eye."
She laughed proudly, and did not reply.
"What possibly could have led you to expect that I would make love to
you?" I insisted.
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