"By 'better' do you mean _quicker_ progress?" he asked, so naïvely that
she concluded he was a trifle stupid. The best-looking ones were usually
stupid.

"Yes, of course," she said, impatient. "It's all very well to push a
punt across a mill-pond that way, but it's not treating the Atlantic
with very much respect."

"_You_ were not particularly respectful toward the Atlantic Ocean when
you started to swim across it."

But again the echo of amusement in his voice found no response in her
unsmiling silence.

He thought to himself: "Is she a prude, or merely stupid! The pity of
it!--with her eyes of a thinking goddess!--and no ideas behind them!
What she understands is the commonplace. Let us offer her the obvious."

And, aloud, fatuously: "This is a rarely beautiful scene--"

"What?" crisply.

And feeling mildly wicked he continued:

--"Soft skies, a sea of Ionian azure; one might almost expect to see a
triareme heading up yonder out of the south, festooned with the golden
fleece. This is just the sort of a scene for a triareme; don't you think
so?"

Her reply was the slightest possible nod.