.

.
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.