silence became irksome to her
she said so very frankly. His absent eyes, still clouded, met hers,
unsmiling.

"I hate the sea," he said.

"You--hate it!" she repeated, too incredulous to be disappointed.

"There's no rest in it; it tires. A man who plays with it must be on
his guard every second. To spend a lifetime on it is ridiculous--a
whole life of intelligent effort, against perpetual, brutal, inanimate
resistance--one endless uninterrupted fight--a ceaseless human manoeuvre
against senseless menace; and then the counter attack of the lifeless
monster, the bellowing advance, the shock--and no battle won--nothing
final, nothing settled, no! only the same eternal nightmare of
surveillance, the same sleepless watch for stupid treachery."

"But--you don't have to fight it!" she said, astonished.

"No; but it is no secret--what it does to those who do. ... Some escape;
but only by dying ashore before it gets them. That is the way some of us
reach Heaven; we die too quick for the Enemy to catch us."

He was laughing when she said: "It is not a fight with the sea; it is
the battle of Life itself you mean."

"Yes, in a way, the battle of Life."

"Oh, you are morbid then. Is there anybody ever born who has not a fight
on his hands?"

"No; only I have known men tired out, unfairly, before life had declared
war on them."

"Just what do you mean?"

"Oh, something about fair play--what our popular idol summarises as a
'square deal'." He laughed again, easily, his face clearing.

"Nobody worth a square deal ever laments because he hasn't had it," she
said.

"I dare say that's true, too," he admitted listlessly.

"Mr. Siward, exactly what did you mean?"

"I was thinking of men I knew; for example a man who through generations
has inherited every impulse and desire that he should not harbour--a man
with intellect enough to be aware of it, with decency enough to desire
decency. ... What chance has he with the storms which have been brewing
for him even before he opened his eyes on earth? Is that a square deal?"

The troubled concentration of her face was reflected now in his own; the
wind came whipping and flicking at them from league-wide tossing wastes;
the steady thunder of the sea accented the silence.

She said: "I suppose everybody has infinite capacity for decency or
mischief. I know that I have. And I fancy that this capacity always
remains, no matter how moral one's life may be. 'Watch and pray' was n