And she was leaning far over the rail, at pause where, when their eyes met, his intense gaze had arrested her: a young girl, scarcely eighteen years old, her delicate, oval face full of the joy of life, aglow with the excitement, the novelty of place, people, music. The light was upon her--upon her slim, softly white-clad body trembling at the unguessed portal of womanhood just as it trembled also under his gaze. She had wonderful hair, which waved without artifice, as blue-black as a thunder-cloud in May; she had level brows and eyes large and dark and tender. Her lips were damp, the lower one now timidly indrawn. While he looked at her, there awoke in Stainton the Neolithic man, the savage and poet that sang what he felt and was unashamed to feel and sing: she was like a Spring evening in the woods: warm and dusky and clothed in the light of stars.
Stainton did not move, yet his heart seemed twisting in his breast. Was he mad? Was he alive, sane, awake and in New York of to-day? If so, if he were himself, then were the old stories true, and did the dead walk? Sitting there, stonily, there floated through his brain a line from a well-conceived and ill-executed poem:
"At Paris it was, at the opera there ..."
The girl was the one to break the spell. When Stainton would have ceased looking, he could never know. But the girl flushed yet more deeply and turned away, with a quick movement that was almost a reprimand but not enough of a reprimand to be an acknowledgment that she was aware of him.
Jim, his own cheeks burning at the realisation of his insolence, but his heart tumultuous for that other reason, himself started. He shifted clumsily in his chair and so became conscious of another movement in the box.
A man--the man that had been, at Stainton's first glimpse of the party, dimly outlined--was disentangling himself from the background, was bending forward to make vehement signs in Stainton's direction, was finally, and with no end of effort on Stainton's part, assuming recognisable shape. It was George Holt.
Holt waved his hand again and nodded toward the lobby. Then, as Stainton nodded a tardy comprehension, he faded once more into the background of the box.
They met a few moments later in the corridor.