IV But She Was Best of All
She pulled him out of the water, and they bathed in the sun. Not a ship sailed the sea.
His voice spoke first, as if he dreamed—a fragment—“But you are best of all!”
She looked up and found his eyes upon her. With her own she questioned him.
“Nothing is in sight, nothing can be heard, but what God has made. This!” He waved his hand at the immaculate sky. “That!” The limitless sea. “The earth!” He pointed where it stretched away from them to the vanishing-point. “You!”
“No—you!” she laughed.
“And it is all good. God alone knows how good. But,” he repeated, while his gaze was fixed upon her upturned face, “you are best of all!”
She kept her eyes upon him in wonder; for if he had not solved the Sea-Lady, she had not solved him. And this was very strange from savage Brassid.
“Yes; God made nothing so perfect as a perfect woman—you!”
“You think me perfect?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Brassid!”
But something clanged in her brain.
“I love you!”
“Don’t, Brassid!” she begged. “You have touched to-day what you have never touched before, what no one has—don’t!”
It was a mighty occasion; but she would not have it. She fought it with her best weapon—levity. She laughed. She made him laugh, and it was done.
“Oh, Brassid,” she sighed, “forgive me! But it is too lovely. And afterward we could not swim together any more.”
“Why not?”
“Why, Brassid! Who ever heard of a rejected lover taking the same walks with his late beloved under the same trees by the light of the same moon?”
“Walks?” questioned Brassid, dully.
“Our swims are the same as walks to other lo—”
“Aha!” cried Brassid, “you almost said ‘lovers’!”
“Did I? How stupid of me!”
“Do you mean to say that you absolutely and positively refuse me?” shouted he, belligerently.
“Certainly not, my dear Brassid,” she hurried forth. “I can’t refuse what you haven’t offered. And, dear Brassid,” she went on caressingly, “I know that you won’t offer—because—because—”
“Out with it!” cried Brassid, still in his ferocity.
“Because I like you so—to swim with!”
“And when there is no swimming?”
“No Brassid—”
“I tell you there will be!” he threatened.
“Well, I’m glad to hear it; for I shouldn’t like this world so well without its Brassid—since I know him. But, Brassid dear,—there! the whaler again!—why must you marry me?”
“Because it’s every woman’s business to be married.”
“But not every man’s, then? So that I might marry some one else, and not bother you with—”
“That is just the trouble!” cried the savage in him again. “You will marry some one else if I let you get away from me.”
“As if I were game!”
“You are. The noblest game on earth.”
“Brassid!”
“Yes. You couldn’t go long uncaptured. How have you escaped? All the men you knew must have been blind, deaf, dumb.”
“Ah, well,” Miss Princeps sighed, “if one must be married some time or other, thank God that there are Brassids! But who ever heard of two married people swimming together!”
“We will,” still threatened Brassid.
“We?”
“Yes, we.”
“It doesn’t sound badly, Brassid.”
“Now that’s better. For you know that, though I’m a poor enough sort, no one has ever adored you as I do, and that you—yes, you—were never such a comrade with any one else.”
“Why, Brassid!”
“Isn’t it so? Answer me!”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
They laughed together.
“Please don’t be cross, Brassid dear, just because I can’t marry you! I’ll keep on calling you ‘dear’ if you won’t.”