"You?" he said in surprise. "I did not expect you, madame. You
want me?"
"Yes," answered Desiree, stepping over the combing. Louis's
companion, who was also a sailor, coarsely clad, rose and, awkwardly
taking off his cap, hurried to the door, murmuring some vague
apology. It is not always the roughest men who have the worst
manners towards women.
He closed the door behind him, leaving Desiree and Louis looking at
each other by the light of an oil lamp that flickered and gave forth
a greasy smell. The little cabin was smoke-ridden, and smelt of
ancient tar. It was no bigger than the table in the drawing-room in
the Frauengasse, across which he had bowed to her in farewell a few
days earlier, little knowing when and where they were to meet again.
For fate can always turn a surprise better than the human fancy.
Behind the curtain, the window stood open, and the high, clear song
of the wind through the rigging filled the little cabin with a
continuous minor note of warning which must have been part of his
life; for he must have heard it, as all sailors do, sleeping or
waking, night and day.
He was probably so accustomed to it that he never heeded it. But it
filled Desiree's ears, and whenever she heard it in after-life, in
memory this moment came again to her, and she looked back to it, as
a traveller may look back to a milestone at a cross-road, and wonder
where his journey might have ended had he taken another turning.
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