She stared fixedly at the rippling water, with tight lips, and nodded
her head at it.
"Yes, it's perfectly disgusting. It's degrading--it's--it's beastly to
be shutting myself up like this with a drunken man. I believe I'd be
better dead--from a selfish point of view--"
Next minute her eyes softened.
"But think how eager he is--what a boy he is--like Jimmy! And how he
trusts me not to let those awful miseries happen to him any more."
She turned round, shook herself together and began to march back to the
ship, her father's eyes shining through hers for a while.
"Marcella Lashcairn," she said solemnly, "you're going to stop asking
yourself rude questions for ever and ever, Amen! You haven't time to
waste on introspection. You love him. That's a good thing, anyway. Never
mind how you love him, never mind if it's a John the Baptist love or a
mother love or a fever produced by the tropics, as Wullie said, you've
to do things as best you can and understand them afterwards, just
trusting that God will burn out all the beastliness of them in the end.
And--" she added, as an afterthought, "If he gets drunk I'll shake the
life out of him."
If Louis had seen her just then he would probably have shied at marrying
her.
She went on board to a deserted ship, hating to stay ashore without
Louis.
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