Read Full Tide for Free Online Page B

she listened, not v e ry attentively, to the wash of the sea against the speeding ship’s side. Then she said, firmly, “I don’t agree with you. The career woman gives only half of herself to her husband and home. She can’t help it, of course, but I shouldn ’ t think any man would genuinely want that. ”
    “Perhaps,” he said in those infuriatingly considerate tones which made her feel about sixteen, “I regard the question solely from the seafaring man’s viewpoint. Obviously, if three parts of a man’s life is spent at sea his wife must have some absorbing interest outside her home. Children alone aren’t enough for an intelligent woman .”
    “When he is home,” she argued stoically, “he needs her mo re than other men need their wives. But you can’t drop a career and become an ever-present and loving helpmeet every couple of months.”
    “My good girl,” he answered amusedly, “you have the q uaintest old-fashioned notions. Why should the woman drop her work every time the husband shows up for a few days? I, personally, shouldn’t know what to do with a loving helpmeet, and I doubt if there are many sea-going men who would. We’re horribly sane, you know. You can’t fight big seas on periodical doses of romance; in fact they might be a definite hindrance.”
    “Then you’d prefer to have your staff and crew only half alive,” she retorted bravely. “Because that’s w h at it amounts to. ”
    “Unfortunately,” he said seren e ly, “I have no jurisdiction over the men’s private lives. Most of them, you will be pleased to know, are married.”
    “And are the married ones inefficient?” she countered.
    “Not noticeably. They know I wouldn’t tolerate inefficiency.”
    She looked at him quickly, searchingly, and put a question she wouldn’t have dreamed she could ever voice to the master of the ship. “Have you always been like this?”
    “Like what?”
    “So unshakable and calculating. I can’t imagine that you were ever a grubby little boy who climbed trees and smudged his exercise books.” Hastily, she tacked on, “Don’t answer that.”
    He laughed briefly. “It’s rather longer since I was a grubby little boy than it is since you were a child with whitish pigtails and a bulge of toffee in your cheek. But I believe I was very normal—all those years ago.”
    “Were you happy when you were young?”
    His smile now was ironical. “I’m not senile, you know. I still have it in me to be happy, even if my ideas of enjoyment don’t entirely line up with yours. It’s not every man who needs a little woman and the regulation family of three to be happy.”
    She had an urge to ask about his childhood, where he had lived and what his parents were like, whether he had had brothers and sisters and what it was that had made him take to the sea. She wanted a background for him, a setting which was less impersonal than the steel bridge where he worked and slept.
    But he was looking up professionally at the black heavens, and after a moment or two he said, “The clouds are loosening up. Watch closely to the right there and you’ll see a star.”
    “ ‘To see a star with my love,’ ” she quoted, and stopped suddenly.
    “ ‘A star to dream on, with hands entwined and blended hearts; a pool of light ...” he broke off with a short, taunting laugh. “So you read French poetry. I might have guessed it.”
    "I wouldn’t have guessed it of you ,” she returned quickly.
    “I first met that sonnet years ago, when Astra Carmichael was studying at the Academy. She used to assume various character parts and declaim it. She could make it s ound either sucrose or evil.”
    Nettled, she said, “That may have been clever, but I still think it’s a good poem and worth remembering.” She saw the star, a diamond o n a dark bed with a mist of cloud passing over it. “A star to dream on, with hands entwined and blended hearts.” A single, lovely star shining steadfastly over the