meeting as an idle sailor might
drop in upon in any one of a hundred ports. Goodwin recognized the
very atmosphere of it its pervading spirit of a mild and very honest
geniality, the peculiar nasal tone of its harmonium, and the timidity
of the singing. Standing in his place in the back row of seats, he
was going on to identify it at further points, when he felt a touch
on his arm.

"Eh?" he demanded under his breath, turning.

A tall girl was offering him a little red, paper-covered hymn-book,
open at the hymn that was then being sung, her ungloved finger
pointing him the very verse and line. He did not at once take it. She
had come upon him surprisingly, and now, while he stared at her, he
was finding her surprising in herself. Under the brim of her hat her
face showed gentle and soft, with something of a special kindliness;
and, because others were watching her, she had a little involuntary
smile of embarrassment.

She glanced up at him shyly, and let her eyes fall before his. The
finger with which she pointed him the place on the page seemed to
Goodwin, whose hands were like hoofs for callousness and size,
exquisite and pathetic in its pink slenderness. It was not merely
that she was beautiful and feminine in that moment Goodwin could not
have been positive that she was beautiful but a dim allurement, a
charm made up of the grace of her bowed head, her timid gesture of
proffering him the book, her nearness, and her fragile delicacy of
texture, enhanced and heightened the surprise of her.

"Gosh!" breathed Goodwin, unthinking; then, "Thank you, miss," as he
took the hymn-book from her.

She smiled once more, and went back to her place at the farther end
of the row of seats in front of Goodwin's, where he could still see
her. He found himself staring at her in a sort of perplexity; she had
revealed herself to him with a suddenness that gave her a little the
quality of an apparition. The bend of her head above her book brought
to view, between the collar of her coat and her soft brown hair, a
gleam of white nape that fascinated him; she was remote, ethereal,
wondrously delicate and mysterious. He sprawled in his place, when
the hymn was over, with an arm over the back of his seat, intent
merely to see her and slake the appetite of his eyes.

"She's she's a looker, all right!" He had a need to make some comment
upon this uplifting experience of his, and this was the best he could
do.

He had come in late sailo