It is an intoxicating moment in a love-affair when, for the first time, in a public place, in a restaurant or a theatre, the man puts his hand down and lays it on the thigh of the girl and when she slips her hand over his and presses the man’s hand against her. The two gestures say everything that can be said. All is agreed. All the pacts are signed. And there is a long minute of silence during which the blood sings.
It was eleven o’clock and there was only a scattering of people left in the corners of the Veranda Grill. There was a soft sighing from the moonlit sea outside as the great liner scythed the black meadow of the Atlantic and, in the stern, only the slightest lope in her stride indicated a long soft swell, the slow, twelve-a-minute heart-beat of a sleeping ocean, to the two peo
