Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/22

 wanted to see light and colour and movement. The unpurged emotional tracts of youth ached for some undiscerned adventure. But above all he was swayed by a wordless, yet none the less compelling hunger to behold the faces of women and girls. Some subliminal sex-hunger, after so many empty days at sea, made him long for that vague upper world which seemed embodied in this very word, Girls. He wanted to see them, good or bad, with painted faces or pure. It scarcely mattered, so long as he could look at them. They would all be goddesses to him, Olympian beings who breathed some diviner air, trailing clouds of mystery after their most casual footsteps. He did not ask to walk or speak with them. Their lowliest skirt-swish would seem only too like the ruffle of angel wings. He merely wanted to brush against them, indeterminately, in the city's crowded places, to watch their coming and going, to hear their occasional voices, to let his eyes dwell on their faces as a seaman looks at passing land-lights. For Lingg was still young, clean-living and clean-thoughted beyond the ways of the sailor. Heilig's assistant on the Laminian had more than once spoken of him as "Mealy-mouth."

And then, amazingly enough, came the girl herself, without sign or warning.