Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/374

 crowded and companionable cities of his own kind. There seemed something barbaric to him in the very music of the band that brayed and shrilled from the streets below. In the men who followed that band he could make out the narrow shoulders and the protruding cheek bones of Carib-Indian blood. They seemed more than outlanders to him; they were scarcely white men. And he was tired of them and their foolish little wars; he was homesick.

He heard a movement at his side, and he looked up from the embrasure over which he leaned to see Alicia Boynton standing almost within reach of his hand. She seemed nearly ghost-like, to his first startled glance, for she was dressed in white linen, and the things through which she had passed and many days and nights of anxiety had left her face still colourless. The strong sunlight, too, accentuated the wistful little hollow that had crept into her cheek. The touch of tragedy which this shadow in some way gave to her face was contradicted, though, by the deep and happy look in her eyes.

Yet as she stood there at McKinnon's side the strangeness and the loneliness of Guariqui seemed almost to fade away. She humanised it and brought it nearer to him. Then his eyes fell on the figure of an officer in full uniform, passing in through the Palace gates, with his