Stefan exhaled a great breath of joy. There was something beautiful upon the ship, after all. He found and lit a cigarette, and squaring his shoulders to the deckhouse wall, leaned back the more comfortably to indulge what he took to be his chief mission--the art of perceiving beauty.
The girl listened in silence till the Scotchman had finished speaking, and replied briefly and quietly, inclining her head. The Scot, jotting something in a pocket notebook, left her with an air of elation, and she turned again to the children. One, a toddler, was picking at her skirt. She bent toward him a smile which gave Stefan almost a stab of satisfaction, it was so gravely sweet, so fitted to her person. She stooped lower to speak to the baby, and the artist saw the free, rhythmic motion which meant developed, and untrammeled muscles. Presently the children, wriggling with joy, squatted in a circle, and the girl sank to the deck in their midst with one quick and easy movement, curling her feet under her. There proceeded an absurd game, involving a slipper and much squealing, whose intricacies she directed with unruffled ease.
Suddenly the wind puffed the hat of one of the small boys from his head, carrying it high above their reach. In an instant the girl was up, springing to her feet unaided by hand or knee. Reaching out, she caught the hat as it descended slantingly over the bulwarks, and was down again before the child's clutching hands had left his head.
A mother, none other than the prominently busted lady of Stefan's table, blew forward with admiring cries of gratitude. Other matrons, vocative, surrounded the circle, momentarily cutting off his view. He changed his position to the bulwarks beside the group. There, a yard or two from the gleaming head, he perched on the rail, feet laced into its supports, and continued his concentrated observation.
"See yon chap," remarked the Scot from the smoking-room door to which his talent-seeking round of the deck had again brought him. "He's fair staring the eyes oot o'his head!"
"Exceedingly annoying to the young lady, I should imagine," returned his table neighbor, the prim minister, who had joined the group.
"Hoots, she willna' mind the likes of him," scoffed the other, with his booming laugh.