"Yes, I understand you, Jerry," she said, dropping her voice that haunting third, "but I would rather——"
"Are you going?" I cried.
"Y-yes, I am going," she murmured, and with what I knew were backward imploring glances and argumentative pouts she slipped down, hesitatingly, hopefully, as a child retreats, and pattered across to the door.
When I lowered my eyes the room was empty—but where she had sat the blanket was yet warm!
CHAPTER XV
FATE PLAYS ME IN THE SHALLOWS
To-day I dived into one of my boxes for some warmer underclothing and stumbled upon a pair of rubber-soled shoes for deck wear. They brought the great boat before me in a flash and then the wharves and then the little group that had gathered at the long pier on that Saturday morning so long ago—Wolcott Sears and his wife, Sue, white as a ghost, Tip Elder and I, with Roger and Margarita leaning over the rail. She had on a long, tight-fitting travelling coat of slate grey and a quaint, soft little felt hat with a greyish-white gull that sprawled over the top of it. She looked taller than I had ever seen her, and her hair, drawn up high on her head, made her face more like a cameo than ever, for she was pale from the excitement and fatigue of shopping. On her hand, as she waved it with that lovely, free curve of all her gestures, shone the great star sapphire Roger had bought her, set heavily about with brilliants, a wonderful thing: all cloudy and grey, like her eyes, and then all densely blue, like her eyes, and now stormy and dark, like her eyes, and always, and most of all, like her eyes, with that fiery blue point lurking in the heart of it.