Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/292

280 And then five minutes afterwards I’d feel like suicide for ever having thought of such a thing.

She wore me to a shadow.

The sea agreed with her far better than I had expected, or she either, especially considering the weather we had. She was all over the boat. All questions, like a child. There was nothing you could tell her enough about. It was extraordinary how the taste for imparting information grew on one. If you didn’t explain everything that could be explained, and a good deal that couldn’t, it wasn’t for want of trying. She had got together a mixed up lot of facts before she had been upon that vessel long. Because when you begin to look into things you find that there are a good many you think you know all about till a sharp-witted young woman starts you on to telling her all you do know. Then, before you’ve time to wriggle, you are stuck. There are men who sooner than get that will say anything.

It is bad enough to feel you are making a fool of yourself when the subject is why steamers don’t sink when they’re floating, or why engines shove them along, or that kind of thing. But when the question’s what love is, and you feel but can’t tell, it’s worse.

“Why do you say you love me?”

I had mentioned to her casually that I did, being driven clean off my balance before I knew it, though I meant every word I had said. And about two hundred thousand more. In spite of my having had more trouble with her old villain of a father that very afternoon. And being full of hope that when it came to hanging him I should be there to see.

“Because I do.”

“But what is love?”

“Love? Why, love!”

It was evening. The wind had been falling away all day. Now it was dead calm, the first we had had since shipping Batters. We were something over