Cad Sills ran her eye over them deftly, as if they were the separate strings of an instrument which could afford gratification to her only when swept lightly all at one time by her tingling finger tips, or, more likely, by the intangible plectrum in her black eye.
The man she selected for her nod was Sam Dreed, however.
Peter Loud felt the walls of his heart pinch together with jealousy.
It was all in a second's dreaming. "Gape and swallow," as Zinie Shadd said, from his end of the bench. The woman passed with a supercilious turn of her head away from them.
"That's a foot-loose woman if ever there was one."
With all her gift of badinage, she was a solitary soul. The men feared no less than they admired her. They were shy of that wild courage, fearful to put so dark a mystery to the solution. The women hated her, backbit and would not make friends, because of the fatal instantaneous power she wielded to spin men's blood and pitch their souls derelict on that impassioned current. Who shall put his finger on the source of this power? There were girls upon girls with eyes as black, cheeks as like hers as fruit ripened on the same bough, hair as thick and lustrous—yet at the sound of Caddie Sills's bare footfall eyes shifted and glowed, and in the imaginations of these men the women of their choice grew pale as the ashes that fringe a fallen fire.
"She's a perilous woman," muttered the collector of the port. "Sticks in the slant of a man's eye like the shadow of sin. Ah! there he goes, like the leaves of autumn."
Samuel Dreed trod the dust of the road with a wonderful swaying of his body, denominated the Western Ocean roll. He was a mighty man, all were agreed; not a nose of wax, even for Cad Sills to twist.
"Plump she'll go in his canvas bag, along with his sea boots and his palm and needle, if she's not precious careful, with her shillyshallying," said Zinie Shadd. "I know the character of the man, from long acquaintance, and I know that what he says he'll do he'll do, and no holding off at arm's length, either, for any considerable period of time."
Such was the situation of Cad Sills. A dark, lush, ignorant, entrancing woman, for whose sake decent men stood ready to drop their principles like rags—yes, at a mere secret sign manifested in her eye, where the warmth of her blood was sometimes seen as a crimson spark alighted on black velvet. She went against the good government of souls.