“You forgive this intrusion, I hope,” he said to me. His voice was almost a whisper, and he raised his eyelids with difficulty, as if they were weighted. “My niece, a countrywoman of yours——”

He stopped, so that it was easy to see he was by nature a silent man. Behind him the girl in pink gazed indifferently at the throng of people who moved slowly before us, circling and circling the arcaded hall in time to the strumming of the orchestra.

“So she’s American!” I exclaimed. Nathaniel craned around the edge of the box to see her better.

The man in black bowed and gave us a sleepy smile. “We could not avoid hearing when you read your letter through the ham. My niece, Marie, she said you were Americans and might permit us to share your box.”

Our reply made it plain we would feel privileged to have their company; whereupon he turned and beckoned to his niece. She came to us with a pretty air of being modestly confused by the lack of ceremony in such a meeting, and with her came a sharp, penetrating fragrance of violets that seemed, like a single glass of fine wine, to stimulate and sharpen all my senses.

“You’re most obliging to permit this intrusion,” she said, taking the chair we offered her. “Your kindness—I said to my uncle you’d be kind, being Americans—we had asked for a box near the King; but they’re occupied, all of them.”

“Well,” I said, “what’s your loss is our gain!” I thought guiltily of the manner in which Nathaniel had forced his way into the box, which might readily belong to these very people; and I attempted to atone by making a flowery speech. “Indeed, ma’am, there’s only one trouble with having you in this box. If the King sets eyes on you, he’ll want to steal you into his own: then we shall be bereft.”

She had a way of lifting blue eyes and staring hard into a man’s face: then smiling suddenly, a sweet, tremulous smile. This she did to me when I had finished my blundering speech and sat there, feeling hot and foolish. Yet, oddly, at her smile there flashed into me a little doubt that she was as young and innocent as she appeared. From the first day I went to sea my father had told me again and again: “Be sure you see what you look at, whether it’s clouds or a lee shore or a man’s face: there’s nothing so useful to a sea captain.” So I looked at her carefully. It seemed to me there were hints about her mouth that might emphasize themselves into hard lines upon occasion; and that her blue eyes were amazingly cool in their scrutiny of Nathaniel and me.