r a cruise.

When I got to the Skull and Spectacles the landlord was standing before
his door smoking. As he saw me he nodded, and when I asked for Barbara,
saying I had a message for her, he told me she was upstairs, and added
something which I did not stay to hear.

I bounded up the crazy stairs with a beating heart. I was all on fire
with excitement at the thought of offering her a gift; my blood seemed
to be turned to quicksilver, and to race through its channels with a
feverish swiftness.

There was a gallery at the head of the stairs, a gallery on to which
looked the doors of the guest-rooms of the inn--rooms where bearded men
from over sea sometimes passed a night when they were uncertain where to
journey next, or when they were too much pleased with the liquor of the
Skull and Spectacles to leave it before morning.

As I swung round the stairs into the gallery I thought for a moment that
it was empty, as it lay before me dark and uninviting. Then from the far
end came the sound of voices, laughter, and laughing expostulation--this
last in a woman's voice that I knew too well. While I stood staring, not
understanding, and bewildered by a sudden and wholly meaningless alarm,
one of the doors at the end of the gallery that was just ajar swung
open, and Barbara slipped from it, laughing, breathless, with tumbled
hair and crimson cheeks. A man sprang after her and caught her,
unreluctant, in his arms.

I see the scene now as vividly as I saw it then with my despairing
boyish eyes. The great strong man had his arms close about her; her
dark hair was all about her face and over her shoulders as she flung her
head back to meet the great red mouth that was seeking hers. I have seen
since pictures of satyrs embracing nymphs, and whenever I see them I
cannot stay a shudder running through me as I think of that dim,
creaking gallery and the dishevelled girl and the strong man and the
tearful, trembling lad who beheld their passion.

I suppose a painter would have admired the group they made; she with her
body eagerly flung forward and her beautiful face all on fire with warm
animal emotion; he, big and amber-bearded, his great mouth crushed
against hers as if he wanted to absorb her life, and his arms about her
pliant body, at once yielding and resisting in its reckless disarray.
But I was not a painter--only a longshore mooncalf--and my eyes swam and
my tongue swelled till I thought it would stick between my teeth as