For an instant Spurrier forgot the sadly altered color of his status and his hand, answering to instinct, rose in salute, while his lips parted in a smile.
But the older man, who fortunately was alone, after an embarrassed instant went on, pretending an absent-mindedness that ignored the salutation. Spurrier could feel that the general was scarcely more comfortable than himself.
Slowly, at length, he left his outlook over the phosphorescent wake and drifted isolatedly about the decks, giving preference to the spots where the shadows lay heaviest. But when his wandering brought him again to the place he had abandoned at the stern, he found that it had been preëmpted by another. A figure stood there alone and so quiet that at first he hardly distinguished it as separate from the black contour of a capstan.
But with the realization he recognized a panama hat, from under whose brim escaped a breeze-stirred strand of dark hair, and promptly he stepped to the rail, his rubber-soled shoes making no sound.
The girl did not hear him, nor did she, as he found himself reflecting, feel his presence as lovers do in romances, and turn to greet him before he announced himself. But as she stood there in the shadow, with moonlight and starlight around her, his pulses quickened with an insupportable commotion of mingled hope and fear.
Her beauty was that of the aristocrat. It was this patrician quality which had first challenged his interest in her and answered to his own inordinate pride of self-confidence.
He had liked the lightness with which her small feet trod the earth and the prideful tilt of her exquisitely modeled chin.
After all, he had known her only a short time--and now he realized that he did not know her well: certainly not well enough to estimate with any surety how they would meet again, after an interval which had tarnished the name that had come to him from two generations of accrued distinction.
He bent forward, and, in a low voice, spoke her name, and she turned without a start so that she stood looking into his eyes.
"I suppose you know," he began, and for once he spoke without self-assurance, "that I didn't hunt you out sooner because I wanted to spare you embarrassment. I knew you were sailing by this boat--and so I took it, too."