“Here’s our spot.”
I followed Mr. Brinsmade and slipped between two lifeboats. Then, abruptly, we stopped. The railing was already tenanted by a young woman.
If she heard our exclamation she did not change from the rigidity of her pose. We hesitated, moving to one side, and lifted our hats in a sobered deference and, I knew, through our minds flashed the same thought: she was French and France was receding from her eyes.
One hawser still held us to the land, like a faint memory stretching back into the past. Then a sudden hissing contortion whipped over the widening waters. And so, with the parting of that link, one chapter had ended for me and another, that in the wildest flight of my imagination I could never have divined, had begun.
Instinctively I raised my eyes and recognized my chance acquaintance of the dock.
* * * * *
She had fallen back against the life boat, arms rigidly extended, holding the railing from her. A gray film hid her features, wound about her neck and stood out in a long flutter, a ripple of light against the dark unanimity of her costume. Youth and sorrow are two great emotions which cannot be disguised. I felt, despite the rigidity of the body which told of the stricken soul, the young grace and dignity. I hoped that she would notice me, but she remained in staring oblivion. Yet, though I had spoken but a half dozen words to her, I can remember how keen was the sense of her presence at my side and how, on the instant, I forgot my personal emotions and seemed to be entering into the moods of the woman whose first glance had brought me a sense of intimacy.
I looked, and then I looked away, with a guilty consciousness of trespassing on her grief. Yet, though my glance was averted, I was looking back with her eyes. My companion spoke to me: I did not hear.
I was thinking of the wrench of old affections for her—the venture into the uncharted new—the fading of the homeland that was in her heart by a thousand memories.