Only an instant the gaze hung between them. It served as a distraction, for other eyes had raced to the balcony. Loud voices were suddenly hushed, for there was not wanting in the crowd that instinctive regard for the proprieties which belongs to communities where gentlewomen are few. In that instant Felder put his hand on the arm of the staring man and drew him to the door of the hotel.
"Inside, quickly!" he said under his breath, for a rumble from the crowd told him the girl had left the balcony above. He pushed the other through the doorway and turned for a second on the threshold.
"Whatever private feelings you may have," he said in a tone that all heard, "don't disgrace the town. Fair play--no matter who he is! McGinn, I should think you, at least, were big enough to settle your grudges without the help of a crowd."
The freighter reddened angrily for a second, then with a shame-faced laugh, shrugged his shoulders and turned away. The lawyer went in, shutting the hotel door behind him.
The man whose part the lawyer had taken had yielded to his touch almost dazedly as the girl disappeared. The keen, pleasurable tang of danger which had leaped in his blood when he faced the enmity of the crowded street--the reckless zest with which he would have met any odds and any outcome with the same smile, and gone down if need be fighting like the tiger in the jungle--had been pierced through by that look from the balcony. His poise for a puzzling moment had been shaken, his self-command overthrown. Feeling a dull sense of anger at the curious embarrassment upon him, he went slowly through the office to the desk, and with his back to the room, lit a cigar.
The action was half mechanical, but to the men gathered at the windows, as they got down from the chairs on which they had been standing, interested spectators of the proceedings outside, it seemed a pose of gratuitous insolence. Tom Felder, entering, saw it with something of resentment.
"That was a close squeak," he said. "Do you realize that? In five minutes more you'd have been handled a sight worse than you handled your man, let me tell you!"
The man of no memories smiled, the same smile that had infuriated the bar-room--and yet somehow it was more difficult to smile now.