other men to shout with laughter--had
they not been gazing, too. The man who dwells in a world full of
charming women never knows what they may mean to a man. Let him be
exiled, and he'll find out. In that moment the smouldering uneasiness
which had made Stonor a burden to himself of late burst into flame, and
he knew what was the matter. He beheld his desire.

As the steamboat swept by below them, Stonor automatically dipped the
flag, and Gaviller touched off the old muzzle-loader, which vented a
magnificent roar for its size. The whistle replied. The _Spirit River_
waltzed gracefully around in the stream, and, coming back against the
current, pushed her nose softly into the mud of the strand. They ran
down to meet her. Hawsers were passed ashore and made fast, and the
plank run out.

Gaviller and the others went aboard, and first greetings were exchanged
on the forward deck of the steamboat. Stonor, afflicted with a sudden
diffidence, hung in the background. He wished to approach her by
degrees. Meanwhile he was taking her in. He scarcely dared look at her
directly, but his gaze thirstily drank in her outlying details, so to
speak. Her small, well-shod feet were marvellous to him; likewise her
exquisite silken ankles. He observed that she walked with stiff, short,
delicate steps, like a high-bred filly. He was enchanted with the
slight, graceful gesticulation of her gloved hand. When he finally
brought himself to look at her eyes he was not disappointed; deep blue
were they, steady, benignant, and of a heart-disquieting wistfulness.
Other items, by the way, were a little straight nose, absurd and
lovable, and lips fresh and bright as a child's. All the men were
standing about her with deferential bared heads, and the finest thing
(in Stonor's mind) was that she displayed no self-consciousness in this
trying situation; none of the cooings, the gurglings, the flirtatious
flutterings that bring the sex into disrepute. Her back was as straight
as a plucky boy's and her chin up like the same.

When Stonor saw that his turn was approaching to be introduced, he was
seized outright with panic. He slipped inside the vessel and made his
way back to where the engineer was wiping his rods. He greeted Mathews
with a solicitude that surprised the dour Scotchman. He stood there
making conversation until he heard everybody in the bow go ashore.
Afterwards he was seized with fresh panic upon realizing that delaying
the inevitable i