Single-
handed, unadvised, in the teeth of the laughter of Guvutu and of the
competition of men like Morgan and Raff, she had gone into the adventure
and brought it through to success.
"You make me feel like a big man who has robbed a small child of a
lolly," he said with sudden contrition.
"And the small child is crying for it." She looked at him, and he noted
that her lip was slightly trembling and that her eyes were moist. It was
the boy all over, he thought; the boy crying for the wee bit boat with
which to play. And yet it was a woman, too. What a maze of
contradiction she was! And he wondered, had she been all woman and no
boy, if he would have loved her in just the same way. Then it rushed in
upon his consciousness that he really loved her for what she was, for all
the boy in her and all the rest of her--for the total of her that would
have been a different total in direct proportion to any differing of the
parts of her.
"But the small child won't cry any more for it," she was saying. "This
is the last sob. Some day, if Kinross doesn't lose her, you'll turn her
over to your partner, I know. And I won't nag you any more. Only I do
hope you know how I feel. It isn't as if I'd merely bought the _Martha_,
or merely built her.
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