kiss and kiss and… soon it was time to go, when can they meet again. Once he had kissed her hand and put it to his cheek with simple tenderness.

She suddenly remembered the lonely and disconsolate Matthew, the Matthew whose life was a long row of days and nights. The Matthew that would force himself to smile and whose forced smile made her terribly sad. This Matthew had told her while holding her in his arms that he had once believed in a true love, but not now. She then started to cry and he kept asking her why are you crying Adriana, and she found in astonishment and despair that she had nothing to answer. Apparently there was no reason for her to cry, it was himto be the kid!’

So she had nothing else at hand. Matthew had settled her in the only role she could play – the warm understanding motherly creature, but she found that to be an unimaginative role, which allowed her no side developments, no sparks.

However, she would have taken that role too if only she had been aware of it. If in the first days Matthew had found sadness in her eyes when there was none, had dug out her sensitivity when she had thought it in perfect health, now instead her sensitivity was running amok but he was expecting her to master the whole ship and had subtly changed his own role. They had started their story as knight and princess, and now he wanted to rewrite it