hers and his eyes looked into hers for a wavering second before they
dropped awkwardly and looked at her cheek. And then he kissed her. It
took a long time. It took just as long as it takes to transform a whole
system of reasoned thinking into something chaotic, nebulous. The
chances are that, had that kiss never happened to Marcella, she would
have gone on with her dreams of deliverance, her ideals of a high road
through life. Louis's lips opened a locked door in her personality. When
he let her go again she looked at him, rather frightened and bewildered.
She was trembling almost unbearably; her face, usually the fairest
white, made gold by the sun and the wind, was flushed; her grey eyes
were deep blue; her mind, for the while, was a blank.

"Oh Louis!" she gasped.

"Marcella--" he began but she seized his hands again.

"Oh Louis, please do it again." That time she closed her eyes and was
only conscious of thinking that, if the ship went down, it would not
matter just so long as nothing interrupted the kiss.

"Dear little girl," he whispered, and ceased to feel frightened of her.
As he saw the tremendous effect his kisses had on her, masculine
superiority put pokers into his backbone and made him feel a very fine
fellow indeed. He had no time to think what his kisses had done to
Marcella. All that he grasped was that she was not like Violet who had
drawn away from him to lead him on further; who had flirted with him and
teased him seductively, and made him pay dearly for kisses by pleadings
and humiliations: who had never given anything, and had never come one
inch of the way to meet him.

"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 h