To pass on and enter another restaurant would be to confess weakness.  He really cared nothing about that girl with the violet eyes.  She very probably was no better and no worse than Ida May Bostwick.  All these city shopgirls were about of a pattern.  He had allowed sentiment to sway him for a few hours.  But sentiment had received a jolt during his interview with the girl from the lace department of Hoskin & Marl’s.

“Cat’s foot!” ejaculated the captain of the Seamew.  “I guess I’m not afraid to take another look at that girl, if she’s in here.  Probably two looks will be about all I want,” and he grinned rather wryly as he approached the door.

The place was well patronized at this hour; and the “lady help” was much in evidence, flying back and forth from tables to slide and “dealing ’em off the arm” with a rapidity and dexterity that was most amazing, Tunis thought.  There was even a girl in the cashier’s cage, while the black-haired man he had paid his check to that forenoon was walking about with a sharp eye for everything that went on.

The Cape man started down the room for an empty seat.  Somebody was ahead of him and he backed away.  A soft voice, a voice that thrilled Tunis Latham before he saw the speaker at all, said just behind him: 

“There is a seat here, sir.”

He knew it was she of the violet eyes before he turned about.  It seemed to the seaman the voice matched the beautiful eyes of which he had thought so often during the past few days.  They must belong together!

He turned to look at her.  She was gathering up the soiled dishes from a table at which was an empty seat.  First of all, Tunis secured it.  Then he glanced keenly at the girl.

Would she remember him?  Had his face and appearance been photographed upon her memory as her face had been printed on his?  She did not look at him then.  She was busy clearing the enameled top of the table and wiping off the coffee stains and the wet rings made by the water glass.

She had black hair and a great deal of it, deep black, glossy, fine of texture, and very well brushed.  Black hair and those velvety violet eyes, the long, black lashes of which were a most delicate fringe!  The brows were boldly dashed on against her smooth, almost colorless, but perfect skin.  Tunis had never before seen any feminine loveliness the equal of this girl, this waitress in a cheap restaurant!  Yet a casual glance would scarcely have discovered much attractive about the girl.  Had he not looked so deep into her violet eyes at the instant of their first meeting, perhaps the captain of the Seamew would never have given her the second glance.  There was a timidity about her, a shrinking in her very attitude, that would naturally displease even an observant person.