Merefleet saw more of Mab when she was ashore than Seton did. They would
meet on the quay, in old Quiller's cottage, or in the hotel-garden,
several times a day. Occasionally he would accompany them on the water,
but not often. He had a notion that Seton preferred his absence, and he
would not go where he felt himself to be an intruder.
Nevertheless, the primary fascination had not ceased to act upon him; the
glamour of the girl's beauty was still in his eyes something more than
earthly. And there came a time when Bernard Merefleet listened with
unconscious craving for the high, unmodulated voice, and smiled with a
tender indulgence over the curiously naive audacity which once had made
him shrink.
As for Mab, she was too eagerly interested in various matters to give
more than a passing thought to the fact that the man she called Big Bear
had laid aside his surliness. If she thought about it at all, it was only
to conclude that their daily intercourse had worn away the outer crust of
his shyness.
She was always busy--in and out of the fishermen's cottages, where she
was welcomed as an angel--to and fro on a hundred schemes, all equally
interesting and equally absorbing. And Merefleet was called upon to
assist. She singled him out for her friendship because he was as one
apart and without interests. She drew him into her own bubbling life. She
laughed at him, consulted him, enslaved him.
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