and
on the rail and her head bent forward, as if she had lost herself in
thought. The ends of her scarf, lifted by the breeze, fluttered upward,
almost transparent in the argent light. Presently she turned away,--as
if she had been alone and were leaving only the night sea behind
her,--and walked slowly forward; a strong, solitary figure on the white
deck, the smoke-like scarf twisting and climbing and falling back upon
itself in the light over her head. She reached the door of her stateroom
and disappeared. Yes, she was a Garnet, but she was also Cressida; and
she had done what she had done.

II

My first recollections of Cressida Garnet have to do with the Columbus
Public Schools; a little girl with sunny brown hair and eager bright
eyes, looking anxiously at the teacher and reciting the names and
dates of the Presidents: "James Buchanan, 1857-1861; Abraham Lincoln,
1861-1865"; etc. Her family came from North Carolina, and they had that
to feel superior about before they had Cressy. The Garnet "look," indeed,
though based upon a strong family resemblance, was nothing more than the
restless, preoccupied expression of an inflamed sense of importance. The
father was a Democrat, in the sense that other men were doctors or
lawyers. He scratched up some sort of poor living for his family behind
office windows inscribed with the words "Real Estate. Insurance.
Investments." But it was his political faith that, in a Republican
community, gave him his feeling of eminence and originality. The Garnet
children were all in school then, scattered along from the first grade
to the ninth. In almost any room of our school building you might chance
to enter, you saw the self-conscious little face of one or another of
them. They were restrained, uncomfortable children, not frankly boastful,
but insinuating, and somehow forever demanding special consideration and
holding grudges against teachers and classmates who did not show it them;
all but Cressida, who was naturally as sunny and open as a May morning.

It was no wonder that Cressy ran away with young Charley Wilton, who
hadn't a shabby thing about him except his health. He was her first
music teacher, the choir-master of the church in which she sang. Charley
was very handsome; the "romantic" son of an old, impoverished family. He
had refused to go into a good business with his uncles and had gone
abroad to study music when that was an extravagant and picturesque thing
for an Ohi