instinctive good taste. She stopped crying after a time, and I
knew the exact instant when she realized my touch. I felt her
stiffen; without looking up, she drew away from my hand; and I
stepped back, hurt and angry--the hurt for her, the anger that I
could not remember that I was her hired servant.

When she got up, she did not look at me, nor I at her--at least not
consciously. But when, in those days, was I not looking at her,
seeing her, even when my eyes were averted, feeling her presence
before any ordinary sense told me she was near? The sound of her
voice in the early mornings, when I was washing down the deck, had
been enough to set my blood pounding in my ears. The last thing I
saw at night, when I took myself to the storeroom to sleep, was her
door across the main cabin; and in the morning, stumbling out with
my pillow and blanket, I gave it a foolish little sign of greeting.

What she would not see the men had seen, and, in their need, they
had made me their leader. To her I was Leslie, the common sailor.
I registered a vow, that morning, that I would be the common sailor
until the end of the voyage.

"Mr. Turner is awake, I believe," I said stiffly.

"Very well."

She turned back into the main cabin; but she paused at the storeroom
door.

"It is curious that you heard nothing," she said slowly. "You slept
with this door open, didn't you?"