The music of the harmonium and of the voices that sang with it seemed to swell at him as he pushed open the swing door and tiptoed in toward a back seat, careful to be noiseless. But there were heads that turned, none the less heads of tame sailors from the ships, for whose service the mission struggled to exist, and a few sleek faces of shore folk; and, on the low platform at the upper end of the hall, the black-coated, whiskered missioner who presided over the gathering craned his neck to look at the new-comer, without ceasing to sing with vigor. It was, in short, such a meeting as an idle sailor might drop in upon in any one of a hundred ports. Goodwin recognized the very atmosphere of it its pervading spirit of a mild and very honest geniality, the peculiar nasal tone of its harmonium, and the timidity of the singing. Standing in his place in the back row of seats, he was going on to identify it at further points, when he felt a touch on his arm.
"Eh?" he demanded under his breath, turning.
A tall girl was offering him a little red, paper-covered hymn-book, open at the hymn that was then being sung, her ungloved finger pointing him the very verse and line. He did not at once take it. She had come upon him surprisingly, and now, while he stared at her, he was finding her surprising in herself. Under the brim of her hat her face showed gentle and soft, with something of a special kindliness; and, because others were watching her, she had a little involuntary smile of embarrassment.
She glanced up at him shyly, and let her eyes fall before his. The finger with which she pointed him the place on the page seemed to Goodwin, whose hands were like hoofs for callousness and size, exquisite and pathetic in its pink slenderness. It was not merely that she was beautiful and feminine in that moment Goodwin could not have been positive that she was beautiful but a dim allurement, a charm made up of the grace of her bowed head, her timid gesture of proffering him the book, her nearness, and her fragile delicacy of texture, enhanced and heightened the surprise of her.
"Gosh!" breathed Goodwin, unthinking; then, "Thank you, miss," as he took the hymn-book from her.
She smiled once more, and went back to her place at the farther end of the row of seats in front of Goodwin's, where he could still see her. He found himself staring at her in a sort of perplexity; she had revealed herself to him with a suddenness that gave her a little the quality of an apparition. The bend of her head above her book brought to view, between the collar of her coat and her soft brown hair, a gleam of white nape that fascinated him; she was remote, ethereal, wondrously delicate and mysterious. He sprawled in his place, when the hymn was over, with an arm over the back of his seat, intent merely to see her and slake the appetite of his eyes.
"She's she's a looker, all right!" He had a need to make some comment upon this uplifting experience of his, and this was the best he could do.
He had come in late sailors' missions are used to late-comers and early-goers and it was not long before the simple service came to a close and the meeting began to break up. Goodwin took his cap and rose, watching the tall girl as she went forward to join a couple of older women. The black-coated man came down from the platform and made his way toward Goodwin, amiable intentions visibly alight in his whiskered face.
"Haven't seen you here before," he said at Goodwin's elbow. "What ship d'you belong to?"
Goodwin, recalled to himself, looked down into the kindly, narrow face of the missioner. He himself was tall, a long-limbed young man, with a serious, darkly tanned face in which the blue of the eyes showed up strongly; and in his bearing and the fashion of his address there was a touch of that arrogance which men acquire who earn their bread at the hourly hazard of their lives.