He must face the issue of questioning her and being questioned, and he hoped that he might have his first meeting with her alone—free from the gaze of other eyes that would torture him, and perhaps mortify her.
So when the moon had risen and the band had begun its evening concert he slipped out on deck and took up his station alone at the stern rail. It was not entirely dark even here, but the light was mercifully tempered, and upon the promenaders he turned his back, remaining in a seclusion from which, with sidewise glances, he appraised each figure that drifted by.
Once his eyes encountered those of a tall and elderly gentleman in uniform upon whose shoulder straps glittered the brigadier’s single star.
For an instant Spurrier forgot the sadly altered color of his status and his hand, answering to instinct, rose in salute, while his lips parted in a smile.
But the older man, who fortunately was alone, after 27 an embarrassed instant went on, pretending an absent-mindedness that ignored the salutation. Spurrier could feel that the general was scarcely more comfortable than himself.
Slowly, at length, he left his outlook over the phosphorescent wake and drifted isolatedly about the decks, giving preference to the spots where the shadows lay heaviest. But when his wandering brought him again to the place he had abandoned at the stern, he found that it had been preëmpted by another. A figure stood there alone and so quiet that at first he hardly distinguished it as separate from the black contour of a capstan.
But with the realization he recognized a panama hat, from under whose brim escaped a breeze-stirred strand of dark hair, and promptly he stepped to the rail, his rubber-soled shoes making no sound.
The girl did not hear him, nor did she, as he found himself reflecting, feel his presence as lovers do in romances, and turn to greet him before he announced himself. But as she stood there in the shadow, with moonlight and starlight around her, his pulses quickened with an insupportable commotion of mingled hope and fear.
Her beauty was that of the aristocrat. It was this patrician quality which had first challenged his interest in her and answered to his own inordinate pride of self-confidence.
He had liked the lightness with which her small feet trod the earth and the prideful tilt of her exquisitely modeled chin.