Seeing the Captain, Miss Buckner was as bright-eyed as a débutante. Instinctively her hands fled to her beaming bosom, but now the impulse was guided by a soberer circumstance.
The Captain was smiling. "Well, good lady," he said, "I see you are as charming and as nervous as usual. I hope you have good news for me to-day." He bowed very low, and kissed the jeweled hand.
"Oh, dear Captain," exclaimed Miss Buckner, touched by the Spaniard's gentility, "of course I have!" And she went on, "My renowned friend, it is so splendid of you to come. We have been looking forward to seeing you every minute—really. Was I not, Anesta, dear?" She turned, but the girl was nowhere in sight. "Anesta? Anesta, my dear? Where are you?"
It was a risky job, wading through the lanes of wine-fat men. As she and the Captain sped along, she was careful to let him see that she admired his golden epaulets, and the lofty contemptible way he'd step over the drunken Britons, but she in her own unobtrusive way was hurling to one side every one that came in contact with her.
"Christ was your color. Christ was olive—Jesus Christ was a man of olive—"
"Won't you wait a moment, Captain—I'll go and get Anesta." And she left him.
About him tossed the lime-juicers, the "crackers"—wine-crazed, woman-crazed. He turned in disgust, and drew out an open-worked handkerchief, blowing his nose contemptuously. He was a handsome man. He was dusky, sun-browned, vain. He gloried in a razor slash he had caught on his right cheek in a brawl over a German slut in a District canteen. It served to intensify the glow women fancied in him. When he laughed it would turn pale, stark pale, when he was angry, it oozed red, blood-red.
Miss Buckner returned like a whirlwind, blowing and applying a Japanese fan to her bosom.
In replacing it, a crimson drop had fallen among the gathering of emeralds and pearls, but it was nothing for her to be self-conscious about.
Very gladly she drew close to him, smiling. "Now, you hot-blooded Latin," she said, the pearls on the upper row of her teeth shining brighter than ever, "you must never give up the chase! The Bible says 'Him that is exalted' ... the gods will never be kind to you if you don't have patience.... No use ... you won't understand ... the Bible. Come!"