But the only result was a vague smear. Sesooā, to give her her Camp Fire name, turned again to her boat-painting, with a baffled sigh--and to her occasional studious glances at the horizon.
“I think I’ll take the camp skiff and row over to the Bar,” she remarked presently. “I might get a few new impressions of how sea and sky and wavy horizon look from there--a broader view of the ocean.”
“You’ll have a hollow impression if you go before dinner,” Olive Deering laughed. “What on earth put this whim into your brain, Sara, of painting your little dory up as a harlequin--a freak?”
“Freak! Harlequin! Well, maybe so. But I’m only putting her into the motley uniform of the high seas, at present, because--because Iver gave her to me. I wouldn’t let anybody else--another soul--touch a paint-brush to her, though.”
There was a low, jealous catch in the girlish voice--almost a sob--which swept the light puzzle of the passing stranger entirely out of mind. For it was August now, not April--early April--and Lieutenant Iver Davenport had had his real baptism of fire, over the top in the bleak No Man’s Land of France--liquid fire and bursting shrapnel, to which a wandering powder-puff was but a waspish prelude.
He had had his “bleeding stand-to--stifling stand-to”--facing the worst horrors in the shape of poison gas that the enemy could put over, had been wounded and citied for gallantry; and his blue-pointed service-star was enshrined forever against the red background of his sister’s heart. She would have given a good deal to know whether another girl did homage in her heart of hearts to that star, too--the tall girl, Olive Deering, Torch-Bearer, whose dark eyes could kindle with the golden spark of a Joan of Arc fire.
Sesooā shot a little measuring flame of inquiry, in the shape of a glance, up at her now and again, as she went on with her blue-and-white daubing, dressing her little boat in the party-colored uniform of the seas, with many a wavy figure and crude hieroglyphic thrown in, to make the disguising dazzle more complete.
“Ah! Madonna! Scusa me! But--but w’at for you painta her like dat--de leetla boat--eh?”
It was a new voice, suddenly drawn near, a voice with a sunny sparkle--a liquid softness--in it which hinted at its having first flowered into speech under skies as radiantly azure, as fleecily flecked, as the dory’s side.
“Why, hullo, Flamina!... Hullo! Little Nébis, our Green Leaf, is that you?” Sara, lowering her paint-brush, which dripped silver tribute now upon the sands, looked up into the new eyes, brown as the velvety barnacles clinging to some sea-rocks near, shyly daring, merrily challenging, through their black upcurling lashes.