“Stewart was still staring at the woman under the awning with that bold, British stare which would be insulting were it not so primitive—the stare of a savage, inquiring only, and utterly lacking in the volume of suggestion which makes the stare of the Latin so insupportable.
“The Count, satisfied with his scrutiny, invited us aft, and as he glanced from Stewart to me I thought that I caught a flicker of amusement in his lustrous eyes. I also had obtained a glance at the lady. She was evidently young and more than evidently lovely; quite young enough for a daughter and far too lovely for the wife of this burned-out elderly invalid.
“‘Will you come aft, messieurs?’ said the Count. ‘Doctor, it is evident that you have been ill; permit me to offer you a chaise-longue here in the breeze.’ He led the way, and as we drew near the lady I saw that I had done her injustice. She was more than lovely; she was positively radiant with a beauty of the most alluring type in a land where every one is weary and relaxed; glowing with youth and health and high vitality, she was as fresh in that sodden clime as a clear wind from the north—and yet, there was something beside, something less clear, more earthy, a lavishness of charm and form and feature; her type suggested a creature bred for the slave mart. It was evident that she was an American; the women of no other race possess that peculiar blending of subtlety, ignorance and audacity. ‘A Californian,’ thought I; ‘a survival of the fittest New England stock transplanted from a climate where only the very fit do survive to a country whose finest crop is babies.’
“I glanced at the Count, the lax, yellow tissues of whom suggested a squeezed orange, and when he introduced us to her as his wife I almost laughed. His wife! The conceit of the term, Doctor; he in whose eyes one could see the after-glow of extinguished flames. And yet—her fate might be far worse. One saw with what care he fostered the orchids hanging from the awning ridge-rope; beautiful, interesting, a care, a treat for the eye, costly epiphytes requiring support. Ah, Doctor, youth cannot appreciate the higher motives which inspire age with its craving for beauty.
“The Countess murmured a few words, and I judged her neither well-born nor clever. You know, Doctor, there are in nature certain freaks of superabundant beauty just as there are freaks of deformity, and she was one of these. There was not much else; planted with powerful instincts to take the place of mind, as in the lower animals; fairly well educated in a machine-made, American way—‘advanced,’ very possibly, but as savage as if she roamed the Carpathian scarp clad only in her abundant hair, which no doubt she would have very much enjoyed.
“She offered us her hand after the manner of ‘the Slope,’ and as Stewart took it in his I saw the blood surge up beneath his yellow, tropic tan; his pale eyes shone like those of a gull, and one could see the deep chest swell suddenly as he caught his breath. Consider the nature of the man, Doctor—more animal than a well-bred dog, who, after all, has many elevated traits, whereas Stewart’s were mostly low—and the fact that he had not seen a fair woman for months.
“The deep blue eyes of the Countess were fixed upon Stewart with a sort of startled wonder; no doubt the contrasts of the man’s crushing masculinity with the colorless shell of her husband’s sex may have struck her as a positive shock. There was almost a physical weight in the impulse which he projected toward her. One saw that she took it with a little shudder—as an hereditary drunkard might gulp his first glass of spirits.
He stood holding her hand and saying what was necessary, and while he was saying it his light, wicked eyes were devouring her. The thing was so outrageous that I could not help glancing at the Count, and at the same moment his soft, dark eyes met mine, and, to my amazement, he actually smiled! He saw the thing as I saw it; no one could have seen it differently; in fact, there was a sort of mutual understanding in his smile, but nothing unkindly.
“The Countess was quick to recover her poise; not through breeding nor modesty, but from sheer combativeness. She seemed suddenly to realize—and I have no doubt that it struck her as quite a new idea—that a man could be too familiar with his eyes alone. There was plenty of fight in her, as one could see from the flash of her dark blue eyes and the rounded squareness of her jaw. She promptly assumed so great an air of chilly condescension that Stewart stared again and then began to grin. He was a good talker, however, in his rough, staccato way, and soon I saw that she was beginning to forget about herself and think about him.
“‘You have been ill, Doctor?’ said the Count to me. ‘Myself, I am also in feeble health—asthma, with a uric acid diathesis and a bad leak in the mitral valve. Hence the sea, the tropics, a sedentary life. By nature I am active, and I find it less difficult to remain quiet where there is abundant passive motion, as aboard a vessel.’