This evening, Amanda’s eyes are an unusually clear shade of green.

They gaze back at her from the gilt-framed, oblong mirror in her cabin as she fastens, with fingers that tremble slightly from excitement, the dress that she will wear for her first shipboard dance.

Thank heavens that she decided to spend some of her book royalties on some decent clothes! This strapless silk evening dress, for example. How she sighed when she first lifted it from the box where it rested amongst its tissue paper wrappings! As she slipped it over her head and felt its cool length tumble all the way to her ankles!

A sigh of pure pleasure.

Amanda leans forward and takes from the trinket-box decorated with small shells her great-aunt’s diamond choker and crystal tear-drop earrings. She puts them on, then steps back, startled by her own reflection. How could she have guessed that the crystals would seem to fill her eyes with emerald lights? And yet, it is so.

With the barest touch of perfume at her throat and wrists Amanda is ready. She seizes her purse and fur wrap. The door of the cabin clicks softly shut behind her. Then she is moving in the direction of the ballroom at last, lured, as if in a dream, by the glimmering lights, the soft sound of violins.