ting forth the introduction; it should have been done
solemnly, gracefully, like a ceremony.

"Miss James," said the missioner noisily, "here's a friend that's
visitin' us for the first time. Now, I want you to persuade him to
come again, an' tell him he'll be welcome just as often as he likes
to come an' see us. His name's, er."

"Goodwin," replied the sailor awkwardly.

The missioner shook his hand warmly, putting eloquence into the
shake. He cut it short to intercept a brace of seamen who were making
for the door. Goodwin saw him bustle up and detain them with his
greeting: "Haven't seen you here before. What ship d'you belong to?"
Then he turned back to the girl.

"Do you belong to a ship?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered. "The Etna."

He had been eager to hear her speak. She had a voice with shadows in
it, a violin voice. Goodwin, relishing it like an apt gift, could
only tell himself that it fitted and completed that strange effect
she had of remoteness and unreality.

"What was your last port?" she asked.

He told her, and she went on with her conventional string of
questions to make talk, to carry out the missioner's purpose in
summoning her. The danger of seafaring, the strangeness of life in
ships, the charm of travel she went through the whole list, getting
answers as conventional as her queries. He was watching her, taking
pleasure in her quality and aspect; and at last he saw, with a small
thrill, that she was watching him likewise.

If he had been a vainer man, he might have been aware that he, in his
way, was as well worth looking at as she in hers. He was big and
limber, in the full ripeness of his youth, sunburned and level-eyed.
His life in ships had marked him as plainly as a branding-iron. There
was present in him that air which men have, secret yet visible, who
know familiarly the unchanging horizons, the strange dawns, the
tempest-pregnant skies of the sea. For the girl he was as
unaccountable as she for him.

"Say, Miss James," he asked suddenly, breaking in on her twentieth
polite question, "d'you come to this joint, I mean, to this meetin'
house every night?"

Her face seemed to shape itself naturally to a smile; she smiled now.

"I can't come every night," she answered; "but I come pretty often.
I, I hope you'll come sometimes, now."

Goodwin discounted that; it was no more than the missioner had bidden
her to say.

"Are you goin' to be here tomorrow?" he demanded.

Her mild