It was over in less time than it takes to tell, but it had seemed to Hindwood that as the hound had leaped, his burning gaze had been fixed on Santa Gorlof.
IV
She made no sound while the danger lasted, but the moment the hurtling, white body had fallen short, she rushed to the side, peering down into the yeasty scum of churned-up blackness. She was speaking rapidly in a foreign language, laughing softly with malicious triumph and shaking a small, clenched fist at the night. It was thus that a woman at Jezreel must have looked, when she painted her face and tired her hair and leaned out of her palace window, jeering at the charioteer who had been sent to slay her. The passionate eloquence of Santa's gestures thrilled as much as it shocked Hindwood; it made her appearance of lavish modernity seem a disguise. And yet he admired her more than ever; it was her courage he admired. Putting his arm about her roughly, “Enough,” he said. “You're coming inside.”
She darted back her head in defiance like a serpent about to strike. Then recognition of him dawned in her eyes. She ceased to struggle and relaxed against his breast. It was only for a second. Slipping her arm submissively into his, “Very well. If you say so,” she whispered.
Guiding her steps across the slippery deck, he pushed open the door of a little saloon and entered. The atmosphere was blue with wreaths of smoke and heavy with the smell of tobacco. At a table in the center, beneath a swinging lamp, the immigration officers were dealing cards and settling their debts with pennies. They were too absorbed in their petty gambling to notice what was going on about them. In a corner, outside the circle of light, he found a trunk and ordered her to sit down. The meekness with which she complied flattered his sense of her dependence. He might really have been a Pasha and she his slave-girl.
He did not understand her. She cozened and baffled him. People and things which he did not understand were apt to rouse his resentment, especially when they were women. His distrust of the sex was inherent. But as he watched this woman drooping in the shadows, his pity came uppermost. She was so alone, so unprotected. The hour was late—long past midnight. Her storm of emotion had exhausted her. It was absurd that he should have allowed himself to become so jealous. He could never have made her his wife. The chances were, she would not have accepted him; she belonged to a more modish world. And if she had, she would have driven him from his course with her whims and tempests. She would have wrecked his career with her greed for wealthy trappings. He and she were utterly different. They had nothing in common but their physical attraction.
He was seeing things clearly. With each fresh whiff of land, affairs were regrouping themselves in their true perspective. He had been the shuttlecock of a shipboard flirtation. He had magnified infatuation into a grand passion. On many a previous voyage he had been the amused spectator of just such profitless expenditures of sentiment. And here he was, a victim of the same foolishness! The futility of the ending was the adventure's condemnation. Probably she was indulging in similar reflections! Within an hour of stepping ashore they would have lost sight of each other forever. After so much intimacy and misplaced emotion, they would walk out of each other's life without regret. Partly out of curiosity, but more out of courtesy, he seated himself beside her for what he intended should be their last conversation.
“What happens next?”
She clutched her furs more closely about her. “I don't know.”
“But you must know,” he persisted. “What I meant was, where is your destination?”