She had put on a hat that matched:
it was the kind of pretty, disorderly hat with waving flowers that
demands the shadow of short hair along the forehead, and she had not
thought of that way of making it becoming. Among these accessories the
significance of her face retreated to a point vague and distant; its
lightly-pencilled lines seemed half erased. She made no demand upon him
for admiration on this occasion, she seemed sufficiently satisfied with
herself; but after a time, when they were sitting together on the sofa,
and he still pursued the lines of her garment with questioning eyes, she
recalled him to the conventionalities of the situation.
"You needn't be afraid of mussing it," she said.
The ship she took her departure in sailed from its jetty in the river at
six o'clock in the morning. Preparations for her comfort had been
completed over night; indeed, she slept on board, and Duff had only the
duty and the sentiment of actual parting in the morning. He found her in
a sequestered corner of the fresh-swabbed quarter-deck. She wore her
Army clothes--she had come on board in one of the muslins--and she was
softly crying. From the jetty on the other side of the ship arose, amid
tramping feet and shouted orders and the creaking of the luggage-crane,
the overruling sound of a hymn.
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