Page 215 - 401_

214

together, but for the first time in our friendship he told me not a word
of how he felt, nor did I see the slightest sign of emotion. His chief
preoccupation was with the fact that he was thirty years old – he
would turn the conversation to the point where he could remind you
of it and then fall silent, as if he assumed that the statement would
start a chain of thought sufficient to itself. Like his partners, I was
amazed at the change in him, and I was glad when the Paris moved
off into the wet space between the worlds, leaving his principality
behind.
"How about a drink?" he suggested.
We walked into the bar with that defiant feeling that
characterizes the day of departure and ordered four Martinis. After
one cocktail a change came over him – he suddenly reached across
and slapped my knee with the first joviality I had seen him exhibit for
months.
"Did you see that girl in the red tarn?" he demanded, "The one
with the high color who had the two police dogs down to bid her
good-by."
"She's pretty," I agreed.
"I looked her up in the purser's office and found out that she's
alone. I'm going down to see the steward in a few minutes. We'll have
dinner with her to-night."
After a while he left me, and within an hour he was walking up
and down the deck with her, talking to her in his strong, clear voice.
Her red tam was a bright spot of color against the steel-green sea, and
from time to time she looked up with a flashing bob of her head, and
smiled with amusement and interest, and anticipation. At dinner we
had champagne, and were very joyous – afterward Anson ran the pool
with infectious gusto, and several people who had seen me with him
asked me his name. He and the girl were talking and laughing
together on a lounge in the bar when I went to bed.
I saw less of him on the trip than I had hoped. He wanted to
arrange a foursome, but there was no one available, so I saw him only
at meals. Sometimes, though, he would have a cocktail in the bar, and
he told me about the girl in the red tarn, and his adventures with her,
making them all bizarre and amusing, as he had a way of doing, and I
was glad that he was himself again, or at least the self that I knew,
and with which I felt at home. I don't think he was ever happy unless
some one was in love with him, responding to him like filings to a