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London, Jack

"The Sea-Wolf"

She was so many-sided, so many-mooded- 'Protean-mooded' I called her. But I called her this, and other and dearer things, in my thoughts only. Though the declaration of my love urged and trembled on my tongue a thousand times, I knew that it was no time for such a declaration. If for no other reason, it was no time, when one was protecting and trying to save a woman, to ask that woman for her love. Delicate as was the situation, not alone in this but in other ways, I flattered myself that I was able to deal delicately with it; and also I flattered myself that by look or sign I gave no advertisement of the love I felt for her. We were like good comrades, and we grew better comrades as the days went by.


? ? ? ? One thing about her that surprised me was her lack of timidity and fear. The terrible sea, the frail-boat, the storms, the suffering, the strangeness and isolation of the situation,- all that should have frightened a robust woman,- seemed to make no impression upon her who had known life only in its most sheltered and consummately artificial aspects, and who was herself all fire and dew and mist, sublimated spirit- all that was soft and tender and clinging in woman.


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