And I said, "It wasn't fear that made me shiver, Porter. It was just
the thought that living is worse than dying."
He dropped my arm and looked down at me.
"Mary," he said, "what's the matter with you?"
"I don't know," I said. "It is just that my courage is all gone--I
can't face things."
"Why not?"
"I don't know--I've lost my grip, Porter."
And then he asked a question. "Is it because of Barry, Mary?"
"Some of it."
"And the rest?"
"I can't tell you."
We walked for a long time after that, and I was holding all the time
tight to his arm--for it wasn't easy to walk with that sea on--when
suddenly he laid his hand over mine.
"Mary," he said, "I've got to tell you. I can't keep it back and
feel--honest. I don't know whether you want Roger Poole in your
life--I don't know whether you care. But I want you to be happy. And
it was I who sent him away from you."
And now, Roger Poole, what can I say? What can any woman say? I
only know this, that as I write this the sun shines over a blue sea,
and that the world is--different. There are still things in my heart
which hurt--but there are things, too, which make it sing!
MARY.
When Mary Ballard came on deck on the morning after the storm,
everybody stared. Where was the girl of yesterday--the frail white
girl who had moped so listlessly in her chair, scribbling on little
bits of paper? Here was a fair young beauty, with her head up, a clear
light shining in her gray eyes--a faint flush on her cheeks.
Colin Quale, meeting her, flickered his lashes and smiled: "Is this
what the storm did to you?"
"What?"
"This and this." He touched his cheeks and his eyes. "To-day, if I
painted you, I should have to put pink on my palette--yesterday I
should have needed only black and white."
Mary smiled back at him. "Do you interpret things always through the
medium of your brush?"
"Why not? Life is just that--a little color more or less, and it all
depends on the hand of the artist."
"What a wonderful palette He has!" Her eyes swept the sea and the sky.
"This morning the world is all gold and blue."
"And yesterday it was gray."