If she answered me I did not hear her. I left her purposely and went aimlessly through the ship, with something new and strange stirring in my brain.
III
I know now that I loved her from the first meeting of our eyes. I did not realize it then nor for many days after. The impulse that drew me to her was so imperious that I yielded completely to it, without power of pausing to put questions to myself.
* * * * *
That night I was possessed of many conflicting emotions. I was an American again after years of exile, making contact with my own kind, accustoming my ear to old accents, familiar phrases, forgotten bits of slang, my heart warming with their exuberance, their youthful spirits. Even the drummer by my side at the table, nasal, rough and loquacious, was a type so comprehensible that I found myself beaming with grateful pleasure as he talked of “God’s country,” stretched for the hors d’oeuvres, and addressed his neighbor as “Sonny.”
Supper was a hasty, scrambling meal, with the portholes sealed. The crowd was oddly mixed, like a herd of refugees arrived from an inundation; a score of young ambulance men returning, the gray-blue of a few French officers, sailors and officers from torpedoed boats, crews of cattle boats, commercial travelers, and those endless rovers of the sea, dressmakers and journalists. The conversation, freed by the sense of the abnormal, rose about me without restriction.
“What are we stoppin’ down here for?”
“Moon’s coming up: waiting for it to cloud over.”
“Why that?”
“Clear moon’s what submarines like, lady. They can see us, and we can’t see them.”