"I say, Marcella," he said, as he let her go. "Don't you know anything
at all about the art of lying? Can't you lie?"
She frowned at him. He went on quickly.
"I've never met a girl yet who admitted that she liked a man to kiss
her. They lie and lie--they put up barriers every minute."
"There can't be barriers between us, Louis. I'd rather die than have
barriers," she said quietly, though she did not realize why, or what she
implied.
CHAPTER XI
Looking back in after years on the six weeks of the voyage Marcella saw
them as days and nights coloured by madness and storms through which
Jimmy went like a little wistful ghost, hanging on to her hand, the only
thing in grey tones amidst splashes of wild colour. Many a time in the
sun-drowned days and windless nights Marcella was reminded of those old
tales she had heard on Lashnagar from Wullie's lips, of the hot summer
when the witch-woman came and men went mad just before the destruction
came on the village. It was as though the _Oriana_ went on ploughing
through the waters, with the Dog-Star hitched to her masthead inflaming
men's blood. Marcella was in a state of puzzlement. She was puzzled at
herself, puzzled at Louis, puzzled at the people round her. Men went
about barefoot in pyjamas, women in muslin nightdresses all day after
Suez; in the Indian Ocean, one blazing day, they ran into the tail of a
monsoon; the lower decks were swamped and the steerage passengers were
sent on to the upper decks, where Marcella and Louis sat surrounded by
half a dozen forlorn children whose parents had succumbed to the
pitching of the ship and the heat.
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