"I should be silly to deny it. I know that had I been a frump, the colonel would not have snubbed me. I wonder why it is that in life beauty in a woman is always looked upon with suspicion?"
She resumed her inclination against the rail again. "After Singapore it is probable that we shall not meet again. I admit, in my world, I could not walk upon this free and easy ground. I should have to ask about your antecedents, what you have done, all about you, in fact. Then, we should sit in judgment."
"And condemn me, off-hand. That would be perfectly right."
"But I might be one of the dissenting judges."
"That is because you are one woman in a thousand."
"No; I simply have a mind of my own, and often prefer to be guided by it. I am not a sheep."
Silence. The lap-lap of the water, the long slow rise and fall, and the dartling flying-fish apparently claimed their attention.
But Warrington saw nothing save the danger, the danger to himself and to her. At any moment he might fling his arms around her, without his having the power to resist. She called to him as nothing in the world had called before. But she trusted him, and because of this he resolutely throttled the recurring desires. She was right. He had scorned what she had termed as woman's instinct. She had read him with a degree of accuracy. In the eyes of God he was a good man, a dependable man; but he was not impossibly good. He was human enough to want her, human enough to appreciate the danger in which she stood of him. He was determined not to fail her. When she went back to her own world she would carry an unsullied memory of him. But, before God, he should not have her.
"Why did you do that?" she asked whimsically.
"But you were thinking strongly about something."
"I was. Tell me about the man who looks like me." His gaze roved out to sea, to the white islands of vapor low-lying in the east. "In what respect does he resemble me?"
"His hair is yellow, his eyes are blue, and he smiles the same way you do."
He felt the lump rise and swell in his throat.
"If you stood before a mirror you would see him. But there the resemblance ends."
"Did I? Well, perhaps I was thinking strongly, too."
"Is he a man who does things?" a note of strained curiosity in his tones. Ten years!