He looked at her meanly amused:

"It's really very classical," he said, "like the voyage of Ulysses; I,
Ulysses, you the water nymph Calypso, drifting in that golden ship of
Romance--"

"Calypso was a _land_ nymph," she observed, absently, "if accuracy
interests you as much as your monologue."

Checked and surprised, he began to laugh at his own discomfiture; and
she, elbow on the gunwale, small hand cupping her chin, watched him with
an expressionless directness that very soon extinguished his amusement
and left him awkward in the silence.

"I've tried my very best to be civil and agreeable," he said after a
moment. "Is it really such an effort for you to talk to a man?"

"Not if I am interested," she said quietly.

He felt that his ears were growing red; she noticed it, too, and added:
"I do not mean to be _too_ rude; and I am quite sure you do not either."

"Of course not," he said; "only I couldn't help seeing the humour of
romance in our ocean encounter. I think anybody would--except you--"

"What?"

The crisp, quick question which, with her, usually seemed like an
exclamation, always startled him into temporary silence; then he began