r our long voyage.

A queer old woman, with a humorous wry face, yellow and deeply lined,
sharp black eyes, and a ready manner, stood behind a small bar and took
note of us upon our entrance, with the air of one well able to judge
our rank and bearing.

The rest went off with her to inspect the chambers which she was able
to offer, laughing and chaffing each other as was their way, leaving me
alone in the main room with my back to the fire. As I stood thus I
heard a sudden noise, saw the curtain of a door at the side raised, and
a girl in a black robe with a lighted candle in her hand looked in at
me.

For twenty-seven years I had waited for a sight of that girl!

She was tall and slight, and carried herself with the careless grace of
a child; her hair was of a bronze color, parted over the brows and
rippling back into a great knot low on the head; her skin was cream,
with a faint, steady pink burning in the cheeks, but as is the way of
men, it was the eyes and lips I noted most; eyes of gray, filled with
poetry and passion; eyes which looked out under brows black and heavy
and between lashes, curled and long, giving a peculiar significance to
the glance. The lips were scarlet, the upper one being noticeably short
and full; lips mutable and inviting, lips that were made for mine--and
all this I knew in the first minute that our eyes met, when, as it
seemed to me, our two souls rushed together.

At gaze with each other we stood, no word spoken between us, for a full
minute of time, when the noise of the men coming back disturbed her;
she dropped the curtain and the light of her candle disappeared, a
little at a time, as though she were walking from me down some long
passage-way.

I do not know how love comes to other natures than my own, and men of
notable integrity have told me how leisurely they strolled into the
condition of loving; but for me, by one questioning glance from a pair
of eyes, half gray, half blue, I was sunk fathoms deep in love, in love
that knows nothing, cares for nothing but the one beloved. Soul and
body I was signed, sealed, and delivered, "hers," in that first sight I
had of her in the doorway with the candle in her hand and the crimson
curtain framing her as if she were a picture.

We had supper, of which I ate nothing; liquor, of which I drank
nothing; and merry talk, in which I took no part, Sandy jeering at me
for a dull ass, I remember, and pretending regret at not having asked
the