My presence there aroused some
speculation among the loungers, I think; nevertheless, I waited in
deepest anxiety whether, after all, Elma and Hornby had not disembarked
at Helsingfors.
Soon after ten o'clock a light shone afar off, and the movement of the
police and porters on the quay told me that it was the vessel. Then
after a further anxious quarter of an hour it came, amid great shouting
and mutual imprecations, slowly alongside the quay, and the passengers
at last began to disembark in the pelting rain.
One after another they walked up the gangway, filing into the
passport-office and on into the Custom House, people of all sorts and
all grades--Swedes, Germans, Finns, and Russians--until suddenly I
caught sight of two figures--one a man in a big tweed traveling-coat and
a golf-cap, and the other the slight figure of a woman in a long dark
cloak and a woolen tam-o'-shanter. The electric rays fell upon them as
they came up the wet gangway together, and there once again I saw the
sweet face of the silent woman whom I had grown to love with such
fervent desperation.
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