She went on deck again. She knew that the blond young man would be there, though how she knew it she could not guess, and yet she argued that there was no reason why his presence should banish her from the free air.
She sat down. She saw him coming past, on a walk about the deck, and looked away. The second time he passed she glanced at him, and he smiled and raised his steamer cap. A gust of wind fluttered her rug, and he stooped to rearrange it.
"Thank you," stammered Muriel. "It's not necessary, really. The steward——"
The young man bowed. It was a bow that, in New York, would have struck her as absurdly elaborate; here she liked it.
"But it is, I assure you, a pleasure," he protested.
He spoke English without an accent, but with a precision that, for all its ease, betrayed a Teutonic parentage and education.
"Thank you," repeated Muriel, and she blushed again.
The young man stood before her, his arms folded, swaying in serene certainty with the rolling rhythm of the boat.
"May I sit down?" he asked, indicating, with a gesture of his hand, the row of empty chairs beside her.
Muriel made, by way of reply, what she conceived to be a social masterstroke.