His own career
seemed no more dubious than trivial.
Succeeding days only strengthened this mood. The Red Sea passed in a
dream of homesickness, intolerable heat, of a pale blue surface
stretched before aching eyes, and paler strips of pink and gray coast,
faint and distant. Like dreams, too, passed Aden and Colombo; and then,
suddenly, he woke to the most acute interest.
He had ignored his mess-mates at their second-class table; but when the
new passengers from Colombo came to dinner, he heard behind him the
swish of stiff skirts, felt some one brush his shoulder, and saw,
sliding into the next revolving chair, the vision of a lady in white.
"_Mahlzeit_" she murmured dutifully. But the voice was not German.
Rudolph heard her subside with little flouncings, and felt his ears grow
warm and red. Delighted, embarrassed, he at last took sufficient courage
to steal side-glances.
The first showed her to be young, fair-haired, and smartly attired in
the plainest and coolest of white; the second, not so young, but very
charming, with a demure downcast look, and a deft control of her spoon
that, to Rudolph's eyes, was splendidly fastidious; at the third, he was
shocked to encounter the last flitting light of a counter-glance, from
large, dark-blue eyes, not devoid of amusement.
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