bec, when you didn't hate me to death, and felt good taking
dinner in my company? Say, do you remember the old _Myra_ you'll soon be
boarding again? You remember our talk on the deck, when the howling gale
hit us? We were talking of the sense of things in Nature, and how she
mussed them up. And how we'd have done a heap better if the job had been
ours. Well?" His smile deepened. "Here we are standing in the sort of
fool position of--what'll I call it? Antagonism? Anyway we agreed to
fight, and stand for all it meant to us, and we're both feeling all
broken up at the way we had to act to hurt each other most." He shook
his head. "Where's our boasted sense of things? We ought to be sitting
right here talking it over, and laughing to beat the band, that I had to
treat you like a dangerous bunch of goods li'ble to get me by the
throat, and choke the life out of me, while you were chasing every old
notion folks could stuff into your dandy head to set me broke and busted
so I wouldn't know where to collect a square feed once a week. That's
what we ought to be doing, if we had the sense we guess. Instead of that
you're feeling badly at me for the things I had to do to you. And I'm
worried to death I'll never get a laugh from you for the fool talk I
don't know better than to make. You need me to send that message to
Peterman. Why, sure I'll send it, even if it's to tell him how mighty
glad you are to be quitting the prison I'd condemned you to, and the joy
it's going to hand you to see his darnation Teuton face again. Sure I'll
send it. It's the least I can do to make up to you for those things I've
done to you. But--but for God's sake don't ask me to read it."

The man concluded with a gesture that betrayed his real feelings. He was
in desperate earnest for all his attempt at lightness. His words came
swiftly, in that headlong fashion so characteristic of his most earnest
mood. And Nancy listening to him, caught something of that which lay
behind them. The faintest shadow of a smile struggled into her eyes. She
shook her head.

"I haven't a thought in my head about you--that way," she said. "It's
not been that way with me. No." She averted her gaze from the eager eyes
before her. "It's the thing I've done and been. It's the thing you, and
every other honest creature, must feel about me. Oh, don't you see? The
killing, the bloodshed and suffering--But I can't talk about it even
now. It's all too dreadful still. I'm quitting whe