褐衣男子19

 (Anne’s Narrative Resumed) ,I don’t suppose that as long as I live I shall forget my first sight of Table Mountain. I got up frightfully early and went out on deck. I went right up to the boat deck, which I believe is a heinous offence, but I decided to dare something in the cause of solitude. We were just steaming into Table Bay. There were fleecy white clouds hovering above Table Mountain, and nestling on the slopes below, right down to the sea, was the sleeping town, gilded and bewitched by the morning sunlight.,It made me catch my breath and have that curious hungry pain inside that seizes one sometimes when one comes across something that’s extra beautiful. I’m not very good at expressing these things, but I knew well enough that I had found, if only for a fleeting moment, the thing that I had been looking for ever since I left Little Hampsly. Something new, something hitherto undreamed of, something that satisfied my aching hunger for romance.,Perfectly silently, or so it seemed to me, the Kilmorden glided nearer and nearer. It was still very like a dream. Like all dreamers, however, I could not let my dream alone. We poor humans are so anxious not to miss anything.,“This is South Africa,” I kept saying to myself industriously, “South Africa, South Africa. You are seeing the world. This is the world. You are seeing it. Think of it, Anne Beddingfeld, you pudding-head. You’re seeing the world. ”,I had thought that I had the boat deck to myself, but now I observed another figure leaning over the rail, absorbed as I had been in the rapidly approaching city. Even before he turned his head I knew who it was. The scene of last night seemed unreal and melodramatic in the peaceful morning sunlight. What must he have thought of me? It made me hot to realize the things that I had said. And I hadn’t meant them—or had I?,But to my intense surprise I heard a light footfall on the deck behind me, and then his voice, pleasant and normal:,“Miss Beddingfeld.
”,“Yes?”,I turned.,“I want to apologize to you. I behaved like a perfect boor last night. ”,