"Why, it's" she began, and hesitated as though at a loss for his name. She stood, inspecting the grouping of the pair in the road, the massive sergeant and his slighter, more vivid companion. "Is there is there anything the matter?"
Waters turned his back upon the sergeant and moved slowly towards her, peering at her where she waited in the growing darkness.
"Not with me," he answered.
"Oh!" It was, of course, Miss Pilgrim, the girl whom he had watched across the top of the vice consul's desk. She stood above him now at the edge of the high sidewalk, whence the deep cobbled revetment of the gutter sloped like a fortification. Gazing at her with all his eyes, he identified again, like dear and long-remembered landmarks, the poise of her head, the fragile slope of her shoulders, the softly lustrous pallor of her face. Even her attitude, perched over him there and leaning a little towards him, was a thing individual and characteristic.
"I wondered," she said. "I thought, perhaps."
"We are just talking" Waters reassured her. "Him and me's old friends."
He endeavored to be convincing; but it happened that she had seen as she approached the motion with which he had turned on the sergeant a moment before, and she still waited.
"Perhaps," she suggested then in her pleasant voice, "if you could spare the time, you'd walk along a little way with me?"
He smiled. It was protection she was offering him, the shield of her company, dropping it from above like a gentle gift, like a flower let fall from a balcony. She saw the white gleam of his smile in his shadowed face and made a small, quick movement as though she shrank. Waters made haste to accept.
"With you, Miss Pilgrim? Why, sure I will," he replied warmly, and strode across the gutter to her side.