“Un clavo saca otro clavo,” say the Spaniards, of all people the most knowing in proverbial lore. “One nail drives out another.” A fair face can only be forgotten by looking upon one that is fairer.
Thus came relief to Captain Maynard.
Turning to go below, he saw a face so wonderfully fair, so strange withal, that almost mechanically he stayed his intention, and remained lingering on the deck.
In less than ten minutes after, he was in love with a child!
There are those who will deem this an improbability; perhaps pronounce it unnatural.
Nevertheless it was true; for we are recording an actual experience.
As Maynard faced towards the few passengers that remained upon the upper deck, most of them with eyes fixed upon the land they were leaving, he noticed one pair that were turned upon himself. At first he read in them only an expression of simple curiosity; and his own thought was the same as he returned the glance.
He saw a child with grand golden hair—challenging a second look. And this he gave, as one who regards something pretty and superior of its kind.
But passing from the hair to the eyes, he beheld in them a strange, wondering gaze, like that given by the gazelle or the fawn of the fallow-deer, to the saunterer in a zoological garden, who has tempted it to the edge of its enclosure.
Had the glance been only transitory, Maynard might have passed on, though not without remembering it.