o talk art or philosophy
to her, polished, but rather narrow of shoulder.

And against all that stood Raft, rough and in the clothes he had worn on
the beach, for there was not a man on board whose clothes would have
fitted him comfortably.

Well, he was not incongruous with this background, simply because he
destroyed it. In a ball-room it would have been the same. He carried
with him his background of high black cliffs and miles of beach and
flying gulls and breaking sea, and in a flash came to her the fact that
he dwarfed and belittled the other people around just as nature dwarfs
and belittles art.

She held both his hands for a moment, managing to pat them, somehow, as
she held them, asking him what on earth he was doing with the swab he
had just dropped. She had an idea that the ship people had put him to
work, but before the idea had risen to indignation heat he reassured
her.

"I must be doing," said Raft. "Not that there's much to be at in this
old kettle. You've got your legs back, well, that's good. I had it out
with that doctor chap and he told me how you were going from day to day,
but I've been wanting the sight of you."

He put his hand on her shoulder as he might on a pal's, then he crossed
his arms. "And well you look," said he.

"Doctor Petit," said the girl, speaking in French, "this is Raft, the
bravest and best man in the world as you will know when I tell you all.
Shake hands with him."

The doctor shook hands.

The passengers, and the first officer, across the bridge canvas, watched
all this with curiosity. They knew something but they did not know all.
They did that night when she had told them as best she could.

After that she met him often on deck, giving him a word or stopping for
a chat, and it was now that she began to think and make plans as to the
future.

Raft had become part of herself, they were bound together as perhaps no
two such contrary beings had ever been bound. The idea of Love, the idea
of Marriage, all conventional ideas as between grown-ups of opposite sex
were as absurd in relation to them as they would have been in relation
to two children who had grown attached one to the other.

As regarded one another they were in fact two children, for Raft had
never been anything but a child and Kerguelen and Raft combined had
awakened the primitive and the child in her, giving her the power of
affection that makes a little child throw its arm round the neck of a
dog.