Within the Tides | Page 3

the popular journalist, "never does anything without
a purpose, that's a fact."
"And to his uncle's house too!"
"He lives there."
"Yes. But he might have given me a feed somewhere else. The

extraordinary part is that the old man did not seem to have anything
special to say. He smiled kindly on me once or twice, and that was all.
It was quite a party, sixteen people."
The Editor then, after expressing his regret that he had not been able to
come, wanted to know if the party had been entertaining.
Renouard regretted that his friend had not been there. Being a man
whose business or at least whose profession was to know everything
that went on in this part of the globe, he could probably have told him
something of some people lately arrived from home, who were
amongst the guests. Young Dunster (Willie), with his large shirt- front
and streaks of white skin shining unpleasantly through the thin black
hair plastered over the top of his head, bore down on him and
introduced him to that party, as if he had been a trained dog or a child
phenomenon. Decidedly, he said, he disliked Willie- -one of these large
oppressive men. . . .
A silence fell, and it was as if Renouard were not going to say anything
more when, suddenly, he came out with the real object of his visit to
the editorial room.
"They looked to me like people under a spell."
The Editor gazed at him appreciatively, thinking that, whether the
effect of solitude or not, this was a proof of a sensitive perception of the
expression of faces.
"You omitted to tell me their name, but I can make a guess. You mean
Professor Moorsom, his daughter and sister--don't you?"
Renouard assented. Yes, a white-haired lady. But from his silence, with
his eyes fixed, yet avoiding his friend, it was easy to guess that it was
not in the white-haired lady that he was interested.
"Upon my word," he said, recovering his usual bearing. "It looks to me
as if I had been asked there only for the daughter to talk to me."

He did not conceal that he had been greatly struck by her appearance.
Nobody could have helped being impressed. She was different from
everybody else in that house, and it was not only the effect of her
London clothes. He did not take her down to dinner. Willie did that. It
was afterwards, on the terrace. . . .
The evening was delightfully calm. He was sitting apart and alone, and
wishing himself somewhere else--on board the schooner for choice,
with the dinner-harness off. He hadn't exchanged forty words altogether
during the evening with the other guests. He saw her suddenly all by
herself coming towards him along the dimly lighted terrace, quite from
a distance.
She was tall and supple, carrying nobly on her straight body a head of a
character which to him appeared peculiar, something--well-- pagan,
crowned with a great wealth of hair. He had been about to rise, but her
decided approach caused him to remain on the seat. He had not looked
much at her that evening. He had not that freedom of gaze acquired by
the habit of society and the frequent meetings with strangers. It was not
shyness, but the reserve of a man not used to the world and to the
practice of covert staring, with careless curiosity. All he had captured
by his first, keen, instantly lowered, glance was the impression that her
hair was magnificently red and her eyes very black. It was a troubling
effect, but it had been evanescent; he had forgotten it almost till very
unexpectedly he saw her coming down the terrace slow and eager, as if
she were restraining herself, and with a rhythmic upward undulation of
her whole figure. The light from an open window fell across her path,
and suddenly all that mass of arranged hair appeared incandescent,
chiselled and fluid, with the daring suggestion of a helmet of burnished
copper and the flowing lines of molten metal. It kindled in him an
astonished admiration. But he said nothing of it to his friend the Editor.
Neither did he tell him that her approach woke up in his brain the
image of love's infinite grace and the sense of the inexhaustible joy that
lives in beauty. No! What he imparted to the Editor were no emotions,
but mere facts conveyed in a deliberate voice and in uninspired words.
"That young lady came and sat down by me. She said: 'Are you French,

Mr. Renouard?'"
He had breathed a whiff of perfume of which he said nothing either- -of
some perfume he did not know. Her voice was low and distinct. Her
shoulders and her bare