It seemed to Jimmy that he had received an excuse for a remark of a kind that had been waiting for utterance ever since he had met her.  Often and often in the watches of the night, smoking endless pipes and thinking of her, he had conjured up just such a vision as this—­they two walking the deserted deck alone, and she innocently giving him an opening for some low-voiced, tender speech, at which she would start, look at him quickly, and then ask him haltingly if the words had any particular application.  And after that—­oh, well, all sorts of things might happen.  And now the moment had come.  It was true that he had always pictured the scene as taking place by moonlight and at present there was a half-gale blowing, out of an inky sky; also on the present occasion anything in the nature of a low-voiced speech was absolutely out of the question owing to the uproar of the elements.  Still, taking these drawbacks into consideration, the chance was far too good to miss.  Such an opening might never happen again.  He waited till the ship had steadied herself after an apparently suicidal dive into an enormous roller, then, staggering back to her side, spoke.

“Love is the biggest thing in life!” he roared.

“What is?” shrieked Ann.

“Love!” bellowed Jimmy.

He wished a moment later that he had postponed this statement of faith, for their next steps took them into a haven of comparative calm, where some dimly seen portion of the vessel’s anatomy jutted out and formed a kind of nook where it was possible to hear the ordinary tones of the human voice.  He halted here, and Ann did the same, though unwillingly.  She was conscious of a feeling of disappointment and of a modification of her mood of comradeship towards her companion.  She held strong views, which she believed to be unalterable, on the subject under discussion.

“Love!” she said.  It was too dark to see her face, but her voice sounded unpleasantly scornful.  “I shouldn’t have thought that you would have been so conventional as that.  You seemed different.”

“Eh?” said Jimmy blankly.

“I hate all this talk about Love, as if it were something wonderful that was worth everything else in life put together.  Every book you read and every song that you see in the shop-windows is all about Love.  It’s as if the whole world were in a conspiracy to persuade themselves that there’s a wonderful something just round the corner which they can get if they try hard enough.  And they hypnotise themselves into thinking of nothing else and miss all the splendid things of life.”

“That’s Shaw, isn’t it?” said Jimmy.

“What is Shaw?”

“What you were saying.  It’s out of one of Bernard Shaw’s things, isn’t it?”

“It is not.”  A note of acidity had crept into Ann’s voice.  “It is perfectly original.”

“I’m certain I’ve heard it before somewhere.”

“If you have, that simply means that you must have associated with some sensible person.”