You start bellerin' at me in the street that way an' I'll just
about."

There was no cohort of hostile istvostchiks here, and anger ached in
him like a cancer. He stepped up to the sergeant with a couple of
long, cat-footed strides and the out-thrust jaw of war. But the
sergeant, instead of bristling and giving battle, held up one large,
leather-clad hand with the motion of hushing him.

"St!" he clicked warningly. "Not now! Be orderly, Votters. See your
lady-consul!"

"What?" Waters halted, taken by surprise, and turned his head. The
sergeant, rigid and formal upon the instant, was saluting. Upon the
high sidewalk, a dozen paces away, a girl was passing; she
acknowledged the sergeant's salute with a small bow. Her eyes seemed
to fall on Waters and she stopped.

"Why, it's" she began, and hesitated as though at a loss for his
name. She stood, inspecting the grouping of the pair in the road, the
massive sergeant and his slighter, more vivid companion. "Is there is
there anything the matter?"

Waters turned his back upon the sergeant and moved slowly towards
her, peering at her where she waited in the growing darkness.

"Not with me," he answered.

"Oh!" It was, of course, Miss Pilgrim, the girl whom he had watched
across the top of the vice consul's desk. She stood above him now at
the edge of the high sidewalk, whence the deep cobbled revetment of
the gutter sloped like a fortification. Gazing at her with all his
eyes, he identified again, like dear and long-remembered landmarks,
the poise of her head, the fragile slope of her shoulders, the softly
lustrous pallor of her face. Even her attitude, perched over him
there and leaning a little towards him, was a thing individual and
characteristic.

"I wondered," she said. "I thought, perhaps."

"We are just talking" Waters reassured her. "Him and me's old
friends."

He endeavored to be convincing; but it happened that she had seen as
she approached the motion with which he had turned on the sergeant a
moment before, and she still waited.

"Perhaps," she suggested then in her pleasant voice, "if you could
spare the time, you'd walk along a little way with me?"

He smiled. It was protection she was offering him, the shield of her
company, dropping it from above like a gentle gift, like a flower let
fall from a balcony. She saw the white gleam of his smile in his
shadowed face and made a small, quick movement as though she shrank.
Waters made haste to accept.