ack and forth on the spot where
their crimes are done? The ocean, perhaps, for its cruel wreckage,
haunts these cliffs. It is doomed through all eternity with a lather
of breaking waves to wash these rocks of blood. And the wind whistles
to bury the cries of drowning men that plague the memory. Joe--

JOE: Yes, my dear.

BETSY: You are the only one--Patch-Eye, Duke and the Captain--you are
the only one who is always gentle. And I have wondered if you could
really be a pirate.

JOE: Me? (_Then with sudden change._) Me? Gentle? The devil himself is
my softer twin.

BETSY: Don 't! Don 't!

JOE: What do you know of scuttled ships, and rascals ripped in fight?
Of the last bubbles that grin upon the surface where a dozen men have
drowned?

BETSY: Joe! For God's sake! Don 't!

JOE: Is it gentleness to plunge a dagger in a man and watch for his
dying eye to glaze?

BETSY: It is a lie. Tell me it is a lie!

JOE: My dear. (_Gently he touches her hand._)

BETSY: It is a lie.

JOE: We 'll pretend it is a lie.

(_They sit for a moment without speaking._)

BETSY: How long, Joe, have you lived with us?

JOE: Two weeks, Betsy.

BETSY: Two weeks? So short a time. From Monday to Monday and then
around again to Monday. It is so brief a space that a flower would
scarcely droop and wither. And yet the day you came seems already long
ago. And all the days before are of a different life. It was another
Betsy, not myself, who lived in this cabin on a Sunday before a
Monday.

[Illustration: "From Monday to Monday, and then around again to
Monday"]

JOE: It is so always, Betsy, when friends suddenly come to know each
other. All other days sink to unreality like the memory of snow upon a
day of August. We wonder how the flowering meadows were once a field
of white. Our past selves, Betsy, walk apart from us and, although we
know their trick of attitude and the fashion of their clothes, they
are not ourselves. For friendship, when it grips the heart, rewinds
the fibres of our being. Do you remember, dear, how you ran in fright
when you first saw me clambering up these rocks?

BETSY: I was sent to call the Duke to dinner and carried a bell to
ring it on the cliff. I was afraid when a stranger's head appeared
upon the path.

JOE: Yet, when I spoke, you stopped.

BETSY: At the first word I knew I need n't be afraid. And you took my
hand to help me up the slope. You asked my name, and told me yours was
Joe. Then we came t