He drew her closer. “I can’t tell you. I never have told you. In all these months I’ve told you nothing.—I love you. I love you.—Your lips just once, Princess.”
Her obedient mouth lay against his own. Her lips were motionless. She slipped from him.
Waving and waving, he watched her from the deck. Now he lost her; again he saw her where raised screens in the sheds made golden port-holes. She raced along the dock, as with bands playing the Christmas ship stole out. Now that it was too late, she hoarded every moment. Beneath a lamp, leaning out through the drift of snowflakes, she fluttered a scarf that she had torn from her throat It was the last glimpse he had of her. A Goddess of Liberty she seemed to him; a slave of freedom, Horace would have said.
CHAPTER XIX—AN OLD PASSION
He was like a man from the tropics suddenly transplanted to an Arctic climate. He was chilled to the soul; the coldness brought him misery, but no reaction. His vigor had been undermined by the uncertainties and ardors which he had endured. Building a fire out of his memories, he shivered and crouched before it.
Hour by hour in the silence of his brain he relived the old pulsating languors. He had no courage to look ahead to any brightness in the future. The taste of the present was as ashes in his mouth. He felt old, disillusioned, exhausted. The grayness of the plunging wintry sea was the reflection of his soul’s gray loneliness.
He had spent so long in listening and waiting that listening and waiting had become a habit. He would hear the telephone tinkle soon. His heart would fly up like a bird into his throat. Her voice would steal to him across the distance: “Meester Deek, hulloa! What are we going to do this morning?” He often heard it in imagination. He could not bear to believe that at last his leisure was his own—that suspense was at once and forever ended.
Among the passengers he was a romantic figure. Stories went the rounds about him. It was said that the girl who had delayed the sailing was an actress—no, an heiress—no, one of the most beautiful of the season’s débutantes. Men’s eyes followed him with envy. Women tried to coax him into a confession—especially the old lady who had met him coming white-faced from the Purser’s office. He was regarded as a triumphant lover; he alone knew that he was an impostor.