When she saw that he had observed her, instead of jumping up and running into the house and slamming the door, like some crude backwoods girl might have done, she came forward and stood leaning against one of the red maples, and chatted pleasantly about the wonderful scenery.
It was a blissful experience for Stewardson, and as he had hardly spoken to a girl for a month, was in a particularly susceptible mood. He studied her appearance minutely. She was probably a trifle under the middle height, very delicately made, with chestnut hair and eyes of wondrous golden amber. Her skin was transparently white, and the delicate peach-blow color in her cheeks was too hectic to betoken good health. But the outstanding feature was the nose, the most beautiful nose he had ever seen, the bridge slightly aquiline, yet a sudden shortness at the tip that transcended the retrousse. She was modest and simple, reticence being her chief trait, as she told about the deer which often took harbor in the stream, in front of where they were, when pursued by dogs.
She said that she had been christened Marie Asterie, but was generally called by her second name, though the first was shorter and easier to pronounce.
Just as they were becoming nicely acquainted, a young woodsman, whom she introduced as Oscar Garis, put in an appearance, and the two walked away together, leaving Stewardson still meditating on the bench. Evidently they were lovers, thought the young surveyor, and when he looked out on Sinnemahoning, the light was gone–the water ran dark and menacing.
Though he had noticed the girl’s unusual nose the first time he saw her, he had been too busy to become well acquainted, but he recalled that she occupied a small interior room, just off where he slept, in the second-floor lobby. He had seen her go upstairs to retire every night, but proximity had meant nothing to him, so deeply had he been imbued with ideas of class. Tonight it would be different.
He walked around a while longer, watching the bats flit hither and thither, and listening to the plaintive calling of the whippoorwills, then he went indoors and joined his fellow surveyors in the lobby. He kept watching the clock and watching the door for Asterie to return, amusing himself trying to cut her marvellous profile, the like of which King Henry VIII or King Arthur may have admired, for she was evidently a “throw back” to some archaic type. It was always the rule for the men to remain downstairs until the women had retired, and on this occasion they were all yawning but Stewardson, waiting for Asterie, who was the last to come in, close to ten o’clock.
Garis seemed indifferent to her, but it was the negligence of bad manners rather than lack of interest. This gave Stewardson a chance to light her fat lamp for her, and she closed the door and went upstairs. When the young surveyor and his companion ascended the stairs, he noted the rays of light from her room, streaming from the crack beneath her door. The night after the lights were out, and his friends asleep, he drew his mattress nearly to her door, repeating to himself the lines of Horace’s Ode X, in Book III:
“O Lyce, didst thou like Tanais,
Wed to some savage, what a pity ’tis
For me to lie on such a night as this