The Firing Line | Page 4

continued:
--"Soft skies, a sea of Ionian azure; one might almost expect to see a triareme heading up yonder out of the south, festooned with the golden fleece. This is just the sort of a scene for a triareme; don't you think so?"
Her reply was the slightest possible nod.
He looked at her meanly amused:
"It's really very classical," he said, "like the voyage of Ulysses; I, Ulysses, you the water nymph Calypso, drifting in that golden ship of Romance--"
"Calypso was a land nymph," she observed, absently, "if accuracy interests you as much as your monologue."
Checked and surprised, he began to laugh at his own discomfiture; and she, elbow on the gunwale, small hand cupping her chin, watched him with an expressionless directness that very soon extinguished his amusement and left him awkward in the silence.
"I've tried my very best to be civil and agreeable," he said after a moment. "Is it really such an effort for you to talk to a man?"
"Not if I am interested," she said quietly.
He felt that his ears were growing red; she noticed it, too, and added: "I do not mean to be too rude; and I am quite sure you do not either."
"Of course not," he said; "only I couldn't help seeing the humour of romance in our ocean encounter. I think anybody would--except you--"
"What?"
The crisp, quick question which, with her, usually seemed like an exclamation, always startled him into temporary silence; then he began more carefully:
"There was one chance in a million of your finding my boat in the fog. If you hadn't found it--" He shook his head. "And so I wish you might recognise in our encounter something amusing, humourous"--he looked cautiously at her--"even mildly romantic--ah--enough to--to--"
"To what?"
"Why--to say--to do something characteristically--ah--"
"What?"
"--Human!" he ventured--quite prepared to see her rise wrathfully and go overboard.
Instead she remained motionless, those clear, disconcerting eyes fixed steadily on him. Once or twice he thought that her upper lip quivered; that some delicate demon of laughter was trying to look out at him under the lashes; but not a lid twitched; the vivid lips rested gravely upon each other. After a silence she said:
"What is it, human, that you expect me to do? Flirt with you?"
"Good Lord, no!" he said, stampeded.
She was now paying him the compliment of her full attention; he felt the dubious flattery, although it slightly scared him.
"Why is it," she asked, "that a man is eternally occupied in thinking about the effect he produces on woman--whether or not he knows her--that seems to make no difference at all? Why is it?"
He turned redder; she sat curled up, nursing both ankles, and contemplating him with impersonal and searching curiosity.
"Tell me," she said; "is there any earthly reason why you and I should be interested in each other--enough, I mean, to make any effort toward civility beyond the bounds of ordinary convention?"
He did not answer.
"Because," she added, "if there is not, any such effort on your part borders rather closely on the offensive. And I am quite sure you do not intend that."
He was indignant now, but utterly incapable of retort.
"Is there anything romantic in it because a chance swimmer rests a few moments in somebody's boat?" she asked. "Is that chance swimmer superhuman or inhuman or ultra-human because she is not consciously, and simperingly, preoccupied with the fact that there happens to be a man in her vicinity?"
"Good heavens!" he broke out, "do you think I'm that sort of noodle--"
"But I _don't_ think about you at all," she interrupted; "there is not a thought that I have which concerns you as an individual. My homily is delivered in the abstract. Can't you--in the abstract--understand _that_?--even if you are a bit doubtful concerning the seven deadly conventions?"
He rested on his oars, tingling all over with wrath and surprise.
"And now," she said quietly, "I think it time to go. The sun is almost shining, you see, and the beauty of the scene is too obvious for even you to miss."
"May I express an opinion before you depart?"
"If it is not a very long or very dissenting opinion."
"Then it's this: two normal and wholesome people--man and a woman, can not meet, either conventionally or unconventionally, without expressing some atom of interest in one another as individuals. I say two--perfectly--normal--people--"
"But it has just happened!" she insisted, preparing to rise.
"No, it has not happened."
"Really. You speak for yourself of course--"
"Yes, I do. I am interested; I'd be stupid if I were not. Besides, I understand conventions as well as you do--"
"You don't observe them--"
"I don't worship them!"
She said coolly: "Women should be ritualists. It is safer."
"It is not necessary in this case. I haven't the slightest hope of making this incident a foundation for another; I haven't the least idea that I shall ever see you again. But for me to