As the seat at his right had been vacant so long, he took the liberty of laying it his gloves, his sea-glass, a book with uncut leaves, and a crimson silk neck-scarf.
“I beg your pardon,” said the waiter, “but the lady who is to sit here is coming, sir.”
“The devil she is!” thought Payne. “Will the creature expect me to talk? Will she require me to look after her in the matter of pepper and salt? Why couldn't I have been left in peace?”
He gathered up his possessions, and arose gravely with an automatic courtesy, and lifted eyes with a wooden expression to stare at the intruder.
He faced the one person in the world whom it was most of pain and happiness to meet—the woman between whom and himself he meant to put a good half of the round world; and he read in her troubled gray eyes the confession that if there was anything or anybody from which she would willingly have been protected it was he—Chalmers Payne.
Conscious of their neighbors, they bowed. Payne saw her comfortably seated. He sat down and slowly emptied his glass of ice-water. He preserved his wooden expression of countenance and turned towards her.
“The old man on my right is deaf,” he said.
“So am I,” she retorted.
“Not so deaf, I hope, that you won't hear me explain that I had no more notion of your being on this ship than of Sappho being here!”
“You refer to—the Greek Sappho, Mr. Payne?”