I am quite fond of the Czar, if pity is akin to love. No; but you can’t turn round without finding some policeman or other at your elbow—look at them, abominable ironmongery!—ready to put his hand on your shoulder.”
The speaker’s grey-blue eyes, always laughing with mockery, glanced from the battleships and lit on the dark blue eyes of Siegmund. The latter felt his heart lift in a convulsive movement. This stranger ran so quickly to a perturbing intimacy.
“I suppose we are in the hands of—God,” something moved Siegmund to say. The stranger contracted his eyes slightly as he gazed deep at the speaker.
“Ah!” he drawled curiously. Then his eyes wandered over the wet hair, the white brow, and the bare throat of Siegmund, after which they returned again to the eyes of his interlocutor. “Does the Czar sail this way?” he asked at last.
“I do not know,” replied Siegmund, who, troubled by the other’s penetrating, gaze, had not expected so trivial a question.
“I suppose the newspaper will tell us?” said the man.
“Sure to,” said Siegmund.
“You haven’t seen it this morning?”
“Not since Saturday.”
The swift blue eyes of the man dilated. He looked curiously at Siegmund.
“You are not alone on your holiday?”
“No.” Siegmund did not like this—he gazed over the sea in displeasure.
“I live here—at least for the present—name, Hampson——”
