A slim figure in a white sailor dress came out from the wreck. She had been bathing, for she wore neither shoes nor stockings, and her hair was hanging loose about her shoulders to dry. She started at sight of me, and seemed, for a moment, to hesitate as to whether she should retire. I rose from my knees, holding Dorrie’s hand, and stood waiting.
I could not help gazing at her; we looked straight into one another’s eyes. Hers were the color of violets, grave and loyal. They seemed to stare right into my mind, reading all that I had thought and all that I had desired. Her face was of the brilliant and transparent paleness that goes with fair complexions sometimes. In contrast her lips were scarlet, and her brows delicately but firmly penciled. Her features were softly molded and regular, her figure upright and lithe. She appeared brimful of energy, a good deal of which was probably nervous. And her hair was glorious. It was flaxen like Dorrie’s; the salt of the sea had given to it a bronzy touch in the shadows. She was neither short nor tall, but straight-limbed and superbly womanly. She possessed Dorrie’s own fragile daintiness. The likeness between them was extraordinary; I judged them at once to be sisters. As for her age, she looked little more than twenty.
She stood gazing down on me from the sullen wreck, with La Gioconda’s smile, incarnating all the purity of passion that I had ever dreamt should be mine. “Gold and ivory, with poppies for her lips,” was the thought that described her.
Dorrie cut short our silence. Letting go my hand, she stumbled up the beach, explaining the situation in her lisping way. “Deareth, thith gentleman hath been playing with me. He’th the man what found me yetherday.”
Noticing that neither of us uttered a word, she turned on me reproachfully. “I thought you wath kind,” she said. “Come thith minute, and thpeak to Vi.”
Her air of baby imperiousness made us smile. That broke the ice.
She placed her arm about Dorrie, hugging her against her side. As I came up to the wreck, she held out her hand frankly. “This is very unconventional,” she said, “but things sometimes happen this way. I was so sorry you wouldn’t stop to let me thank you yesterday. I was hoping we would meet again.”
It seemed quite natural to sit down beside this stranger. Usually in the presence of women I was tongue-tied and had to rack my brains to think what to say. When the opportunity to escape came, I always took it, and spent the next hour in kicking myself for having behaved like a frightened boy. On this occasion it was quite otherwise. Sprawled out in the shadow of the wreck, gazing up into her girlish face while she cuddled Dorrie to her, I found myself talking with a fearlessness and freedom which I was not aware of at the time.
“You were bathing?”
She shook out her hair. “Looks like it?”