Mrs. Nevin called to her children, who still pressed against Ariel, holding her hands, “There’s Uncle Hugh, darlings. Wave to him. See, he has found us. Isn’t it nice of him to meet our boat!” Hugh returned the children’s obedient salutes, but the light was gone. Was it merely habitual reserve returning to duty, or had the sudden delight really as suddenly died? Ariel knew instantly and intuitively that these children were not related to Hugh, although Mrs. Nevin had called him uncle. Now he had to see herself, wedged in between the children. She tried to smile down at him, to help him to his recognition, but her lips were as cold as the wind in her face. She could not smile. His glance was passing her by as casually as it had passed a hundred other bending faces above the deck rails. After a little farther search it returned to Mrs. Nevin who bent forward, held out her gloved hands, and called down, “Toss, Hugh! Toss! I can catch!”—laughing. For just an instant Hugh appeared puzzled. Then he remembered the violets jammed under his arm, and tossed them up to the waiting hands. It was an expert toss, and Ariel remembered how her father had once drawn her attention to the fact that all Hugh’s motions were expert, effective. The smell of the violets, so near now, was dizzying her with nostalgia. She wanted to cry out, “They are mine, not yours. He brought them for me. He never even knew you were on the boat!” But instead, she loosened the children’s hands from hers and turned her back to the pier. Through the darkness of tears she moved away toward the stairs, with the intention of making sure that her baggage had left her stateroom. It would be time enough to identify herself to Hugh, who had forgotten her, when she came off the ship. She was almost the last person down the gangway. Hugh was there at the foot, looking anxious, for he had begun to be afraid he had missed Ariel Clare in the disembarking crowd. But even when she stopped by him and with head back, so that he might see her face plainly under the brim of her green hat, said, “I’m Ariel, Mr. Weyman. It’s kind of you to have me and to meet me,” he looked doubtful. “You!” he murmured, obviously taken aback and surprised. “Why, I thought you were the twins’ nurse!” But even as he spoke he saw that it was indeed Ariel, standing with the look that she used to wear sometimes before vanishing away into hot, white sunlight, years and years ago when he was young and she was an unreal fairy creature, hovering almost unnoticed somewhere on the edges of his first deep experience of friendship. Of course this was she; how hadn’t he known? “But the twins were clinging to you like burrs, weren’t they!” he insisted, explaining his stupidity. “It looked, you know, as if you belonged, body and soul, to Persis and Nicky. But of course it’s you.”