The missioner's official voice brayed between them benevolently. Goodwin had a momentary sense that there was a sort of indecency in thus trumpeting forth the introduction; it should have been done solemnly, gracefully, like a ceremony.
"Miss James," said the missioner noisily, "here's a friend that's visitin' us for the first time. Now, I want you to persuade him to come again, an' tell him he'll be welcome just as often as he likes to come an' see us. His name's, er."
"Goodwin," replied the sailor awkwardly.
The missioner shook his hand warmly, putting eloquence into the shake. He cut it short to intercept a brace of seamen who were making for the door. Goodwin saw him bustle up and detain them with his greeting: "Haven't seen you here before. What ship d'you belong to?" Then he turned back to the girl.
"Do you belong to a ship?" she asked.
"Yes," he answered. "The Etna."
He had been eager to hear her speak. She had a voice with shadows in it, a violin voice. Goodwin, relishing it like an apt gift, could only tell himself that it fitted and completed that strange effect she had of remoteness and unreality.
"What was your last port?" she asked.
He told her, and she went on with her conventional string of questions to make talk, to carry out the missioner's purpose in summoning her. The danger of seafaring, the strangeness of life in ships, the charm of travel she went through the whole list, getting answers as conventional as her queries. He was watching her, taking pleasure in her quality and aspect; and at last he saw, with a small thrill, that she was watching him likewise.
If he had been a vainer man, he might have been aware that he, in his way, was as well worth looking at as she in hers. He was big and limber, in the full ripeness of his youth, sunburned and level-eyed. His life in ships had marked him as plainly as a branding-iron. There was present in him that air which men have, secret yet visible, who know familiarly the unchanging horizons, the strange dawns, the tempest-pregnant skies of the sea. For the girl he was as unaccountable as she for him.