“Oh, well, you know, I am off,” I said, feeling that this, perhaps, was the best thing to do.

“Yes,” he breathed out.  “Day after to-morrow.”

This was not what I had meant; but as he gazed persistently on the floor, I followed the direction of his glance.  In the absolute stillness of the house we stared at the high-heeled slipper the girl had lost in her flight.  We stared.  It lay overturned.

After what seemed a very long time to me, Jacobus hitched his chair forward, stooped with extended arm and picked it up.  It looked a slender thing in his big, thick hands.  It was not really a slipper, but a low shoe of blue, glazed kid, rubbed and shabby.  It had straps to go over the instep, but the girl only thrust her feet in, after her slovenly manner.  Jacobus raised his eyes from the shoe to look at me.

“Sit down, Captain,” he said at last, in his subdued tone.

As if the sight of that shoe had renewed the spell, I gave up suddenly the idea of leaving the house there and then.  It had become impossible.  I sat down, keeping my eyes on the fascinating object.  Jacobus turned his daughter’s shoe over and over in his cushioned paws as if studying the way the thing was made.  He contemplated the thin sole for a time; then glancing inside with an absorbed air: 

“I am glad I found you here, Captain.”

I answered this by some sort of grunt, watching him covertly.  Then I added:  “You won’t have much more of me now.”

He was still deep in the interior of that shoe on which my eyes too were resting.

“Have you thought any more of this deal in potatoes I spoke to you about the other day?”

“No, I haven’t,” I answered curtly.  He checked my movement to rise by an austere, commanding gesture of the hand holding that fatal shoe.  I remained seated and glared at him.  “You know I don’t trade.”

“You ought to, Captain.  You ought to.”

I reflected.  If I left that house now I would never see the girl again.  And I felt I must see her once more, if only for an instant.  It was a need, not to be reasoned with, not to be disregarded.  No, I did not want to go away.  I wanted to stay for one more experience of that strange provoking sensation and of indefinite desire, the habit of which had made me—­me of all people!—­dread the prospect of going to sea.

“Mr. Jacobus,” I pronounced slowly.  “Do you really think that upon the whole and taking various’ matters into consideration—­I mean everything, do you understand?—­it would be a good thing for me to trade, let us say, with you?”

I waited for a while.  He went on looking at the shoe which he held now crushed in the middle, the worn point of the toe and the high heel protruding on each side of his heavy fist.

“That will be all right,” he said, facing me squarely at last.

“Are you sure?”

“You’ll find it quite correct, Captain.”  He had uttered his habitual phrases in his usual placid, breath-saving voice and stood my hard, inquisitive stare sleepily without as much as a wink.