Vytal stood motionless, watching her with hunger in his eyes.
Her beauty, of that rare kind which disarms criticism even while suggesting it, was not a flash to startle fleetingly the observer, but a subtle charm, with all those deeply suggestive qualities of form and feature which weave themselves into the very heart of memory. Hers was no brilliant contrast of color in hair and brows and cheeks, but rather a perfect harmony. The light brown of her hair blent with her hazel eyes and with the fine straight lines above them. Her color came and went with each change of expression, like the transitory flush of earliest morning; but generally her face was of a clear cream tint, which died away softly in the russet hair.
The worshippers were now separating, and she, by the side of a thin, weak-looking man, who, from Marlowe’s description, was probably her brother, came near to Vytal.
He stepped back into a dense shadow, turning half away.
“Nay,” he heard her say, coldly, “you know I would be alone oftentimes at evening. Solitude and reverie are indispensable to some natures, and mine is one of these. I shall be safe, and if need be you can find me when you will up there in the stern.” With that she left her companion. But at first Vytal could not bring himself to follow her. She had expressed a wish: it was his law. Yet, as the minutes went by, seeming hours, he began to grow fearful lest some harm should befall the girl, and so set out in quest of her.
There, on the top deck, that she might have no roof above her head, but only the sky, she stood leaning against the bulwark and gazing down into the water far below. This bulwark, although much lower and narrower than those of the Spanish type, which on galleys were sometimes three or four feet thick, walling in the lofty sterns like castle ramparts, was, as may be imagined, no unstable support for so light a burden. Nevertheless, Vytal, considering the possibility of a sudden wave causing the ship to lurch violently, and wanting this or any other excuse, no matter how preposterous, to render justifiable his intrusion on her desired solitude, stepped to the girl’s side.
She turned slowly toward him, and, stroking back a lock of hair from her forehead, looked up into his face. “And so you are truly here in flesh and fell,” she said, with a certain wonder, yet no surprise, as though her thoughts had not been interrupted, but rather realized, by the actual appearance of their subject. It was as if she had known, with no need of ordinary information to give her knowledge. And strangely enough her lack of surprise brought Vytal no astonishment, but only a slight perplexity and gladness. He had dimly surmised that she would know, but could not explain the reason of her intuition. And yet, while wanting words, he only gazed at her, a look of regret crossed his face.
“You seem not overjoyed, Mistress Dare.”
To this she made no answer, but withdrew her eyes, and he saw their long lashes almost touch her cheeks as she looked down once more into the water. “I implore your pardon,” he said, a low note of pain in his never-faltering voice. “But I had not deemed your reverie so sacred. ’Twas a man’s rough error,” and he turned away.
“Stay. In going you are guilty of the only error. I would not have you leave me with the word ‘ingrate’ on your lips. Nay, make no denial. I must, in truth, have seemed ungrateful.” She fully believed—and perhaps there was vanity in the supposition—that he had followed her, that even the ocean’s breadth had not deterred him, and the belief deprived her somewhat of her perfect self-command. She was looking up at him now, her hazel eyes wide open, helpless in expression and for the moment like a child’s. “I have not yet said ‘I thank you.’” He made a deprecatory gesture. “No,” she persisted, with a glance more free. “Oh, why are brave men ever thus, turning away when we would offer them our feeble words of gratitude, while they who merit not a smile of recompense bow low, and wait, and wait, for unearned thanks? Yet what can I say? That you are a knight worthy of the name? That I have never seen a nobler play of arms? That you saved my—honor? And then, after all this, am I to repeat ‘I thank you, I thank you,’ as I would to some fop stooping for my fan.”