Still, like a wise soldier, he prayed hard that night not to be led into temptation.
In this spirit of discreet valour, he had, on embarking, after making a survey of his fellow-passengers, congratulated himself on the singular unseductiveness of the array feminine. As in the days of Odysseus, the siren remains one of the most dreaded dangers of those that go down to the sea in ships, and Sid’s previous crossings had not been uneventful in this respect.
On coming on deck rather late next forenoon, Sid was immediately aware, before he traced his impression to its cause, of a subtle attractive change in the human atmosphere--just, as in early spring, suddenly, one morning, we come out into the air, and know, before we have seen them, that there are flowers in the garden. So poor Sid’s terribly sensitive instinct warned him immediately of the unexpected presence of a beautiful woman. Casting his eyes along the prosaic line of deck chair mummies, he saw that his instinct had not been at fault. A beautiful woman had blossomed there in the night. With the vividness of almond stars among the bare boughs, she shone among the other passengers, an apparition of fragrance, all dew and danger. One of the chairs had remained vacant up till this morning. It was the chair next to Sid’s own, and it was with a quick thrill in which pleasure was quaintly blended with alarm, that he realised that it was in this chair that the apparition was sitting.
“So it is,” sighed Sid, with an inward smile, “that heaven leads us not into temptation.”
He did not seat himself at once, but walked the deck several turns, partly to reconnoitre the fair enemy, and partly with the heroic resolve of seeking out the deck steward and having his chair removed to a less perilous position. This extreme measure, however, struck him as both eccentric as well as cowardly, and the reconnaissance finally decided the matter. After all, the voyage so far had been dull enough, and his love for Rosamund surely called for no such fanatical self-denial.
So presently he found himself seated by the side of the apparition, pleasantly enveloped in a delicate exhalation of violets, and luxuriously conscious of the proximity of a beautiful, breathing woman. For a while the first conventional reserves protected him. He took up his book and appeared absorbed in it. She, too, was reading. One of those modern novels sufficiently artistic and emotionally speculative to arouse one’s interest in the personality of its reader, and to afford a ready freemasonry of communication between strangers not unwilling to make each other’s acquaintance.