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matter, have been easier! Her gray eyes, of an innocence not without daring, her kind mouth amiable and a little weak, her tall easy figure, the brown woolen scarf and rough brown stockings to match—he noticed sharply all these things—and noticed also the slight stiffening of shyness with which she observed his approach. Unconsciously, she had contrived to admit the fact that she was aware of him and liked him. The way in which she shifted her balance, at the same time lifting a little before her one of her brown slippers, and frowning at the bright buckle, and the way in which she broke rather emphatically into the middle of something that the older prelate was saying—ah! She would be friendly, she was prepared to like and be liked, and to make confessions by moonlight.
    It was the brown woolen muffler and gray eyes which most disturbed him. Gray eyes, and brown muffler, on a ship’s deck, in sunlight, at sea—this meant one thing to him: Cynthia. Cynthia, on the Silurian, had worn such a muffler: throwing it languidly over one shoulder and around her throat as she started forward, with that odd look of distance and somber detachment in her gray eyes, sea-gazing and imperious. Good God, what an absurd pang the mere visual thought of her still gave him after a year! A disgraceful weakness. He sank into the corner seat nearest the door of the smoking room, dropping his book on the table. The pianist of the ship orchestra sat next to him, a small golden harp embroidered on the sleeve of his soiled and stained blue coat. He was a pale, ill-shaven young man, with reddish hair slicked back from his clammy forehead and watery blue eyes behind thick spectacles. His mouth was small, curled and petulant, and his voice had a complaining quality. He was leaning forward on the table, talking to an extraordinary-looking young woman whom Demarest had not noticed before.
    “You’re Welsh aren’t you?”
    The young woman looked at him sidelong in a manner intended to be vampirine. Her green eyes were by nature narrow and gleaming under long black lashes, and she deliberately over exaggerated this effect. An extraordinarily lascivious face, thought Demarest—the eyes cunning and treacherous, and the mouth, which might have been beautiful had it been more moderate, extravagantly red and rich and extravagantly and cruelly curved downward at the corners. A vampire, a serpent, a lamia, a carrion flower—yes, a mouth like a carrion flower, and giving out poisonous juices; for as she laughed, Demarest noticed that the lower lip, which was undershot, was wet with saliva. She lifted her strange face to laugh, giving only two short musical sounds, then lowered her face again and wiped her mouth with a crumpled handkerchief.
    “Welsh? Why do you think I’m Welsh?… You ought to be Welsh, with a harp on your sleeve!”
    She gave another laugh, eying Demarest; and Demarest noticed, as she again lifted and dropped her head, that her throat was singularly beautiful. The pianist turned to look at Demarest, smiled, and went on:
    “Well, I don’t know if you look Welsh: except that you’re dark. But you asked if I had any Welsh songs, so what could be simpler? Eh?… What could be simpler?…” The pianist smiled oilily, showing three gold teeth. He knitted his white plump fingers together before him on the table. “What’s your name?” he then went on.
    The young woman assumed an air at the same time injured and arch. She drew back a little, narrowed her eyes at the pianist’s thick spectacles, then directed suddenly at Demarest a serpentine smile, at the same time giving him a gleaming wink quick as the eye of a Kodak.
    “Isn’t he smart?… And personal!… sweet hour.”
    Demarest smiled, lighting his pipe. He was taken aback, but somewhat excited. The creature was so obviously—What? While she turned, half rising, to look out of a porthole at the sea (again wiping her juicy mouth) he tried to analyze the effect she had on him.