Jenny had the cabin to herself. Mrs.—, that one whose name she always forgot, was still on deck. She could hear them talking, and Mr. Fairchild’s jolly laugh came from somewhere, though he hadn’t been upstairs when she left; and the muted nasal sound of the victrola and thumping feet just over her head. Still dancing. Should she go back? She sat holding a handglass, staring into it, but the handglass was bland, reminding her that after all this was one night she didn’t have to dance any more. And you have to dance so many nights. To-morrow night, perhaps, it said. But I don’t have to dance to-morrow night, she thought . . . staring into the glass and sitting utterly motionless. . . . Its thin whine rose keening to an ecstatic point and in the glass she saw it mar her throat with a small gray speck. She slapped savagely. It eluded her with a weary, practised skill, hanging fuzzily between her and the unshaded light.

My Lord, why do you want to go to Mandeville? she thought. Her palms flashed, smacking cleanly, and Jenny examined her hand with distaste. Where do they carry so much blood she wondered, rubbing her palm on the back of her stocking. And so young, too. I hope that’s the last one. It must have been, for there was no sound save a small lapping whisper of water and a troubling faraway suggestion of brass broken by a monotonous thumping of feet over her head. Dancing still. You really don’t have to dance at all, thought Jenny, yawning into the glass, examining with interest the pink and seemingly endless curve of her gullet, when the door opened and the girl, Patricia, entered the room. She wore a raincoat over her pajamas and Jenny saw her reflected face in the mirror.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” the niece replied, “I thought you’d have stayed up there prancing around with ’em.”

“Lord,” Jenny said, “you don’t have to dance all your life, do you? You don’t seem to be there.”

The niece thrust her hands into the raincoat pockets and stared about the small room. “Don’t you close that window when you undress?” she asked. “Standing wide open like that. . . .”

Jenny put the mirror down. “That window? I don’t guess there’s anybody out there this time of night.”

The niece went to the port and saw a pale sky bisected laterally by a dark rigidity of water. The moon spread her silver hand on it; a broadening path of silver, and in the path the water came alive ceaselessly, no longer rigid. “I guess not,” she murmured. “The only man who could walk on water is dead. . . . Which one is yours?” She threw off the raincoat and turned toward the two berths. The lower garment of her pajamas was tied about her waist with a man’s frayed necktie.

“Is he?” Jenny murmured with detachment. “That one,” she answered vaguely, twisting her body to examine the back of one reverted leg. After a while she looked up. “That ain’t mine. That’s Mrs. What’s-her-name’s you are in.”

“Well, it don’t make any difference.” The niece lay flat, spreading her arms and legs luxuriously. “Gimme a cigarette. Have you got any?”

“I haven’t got any. I don’t smoke.” Jenny’s leg was satisfactory, so she unwrithed herself.

“You don’t smoke? Why don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Jenny replied, “I just don’t.”

“Look around and see if Eva’s got some somewhere.” The niece raised her head. “Go on: look in her things, she won’t mind.”

Jenny hunted for cigarettes in a soft blonde futility. “Pete’s got some,” she remarked after a time. “He bought twenty packages just before we left town, to bring on the boat.”

“Twenty packages? Good Lord, where’d he think we were going? He must have been scared of shipwreck or something.”

“I guess so.”

“Gabriel’s pants,” the niece said. “That’s all he brought, was it? Just cigarettes? What did you bring?”

“I brought a comb,” Jenny dragged her little soiled dress over her head. Her voice was muffled, “and some rouge.” She shook out her drowsy gold hair and let the dress fall to the floor. “Pete’s got some, though,” she repeated, thrusting the dress beneath the dressing table with her foot.

“I know,” the niece rejoined, “and so has Mr. Fairchild. And so has the steward, if Mark Frost hasn’t borrowed ’em all. And I saw the captain smoking one, too. But that’s not doing me any good.”

“No,” agreed Jenny placidly. Her undergarment was quite pink, enveloping her from shoulder to knee with ribbons and furbelows. She loosened a few of these and stepped sweetly and rosily out of it, casting it also under the table.

“You aren’t going to leave ’em there, are you?” the niece asked. “Why don’t you put ’em on the chair?”

“Mrs.—Mrs. Wiseman puts hers on the chair.”

“Well, you got here first: why don’t you take it? Or hang ’em on those hooks behind the door?”

“Hooks?” Jenny looked at the door. “Oh. . . . They’ll be all right there, I guess.” She stripped off her stockings and laid them on the dressing table. Then she turned to the mirror again and picked up her comb. The comb passed through her fair, soft hair with a faint sound, as of silk, and her hair lent to Jenny’s divine body a halo like an angel’s. The remote victrola, measured feet, a lapping of water, came into the room.

“You’ve got a funny figure,” the niece remarked after a while, calmly, watching her.

“Funny?” repeated Jenny, looking up with soft belligerence. “It’s no funnier than yours. At least my legs don’t look like birds’ legs.”

“Neither do mine,” the other replied with complacence, flat on her back. “Your legs are all right. I mean, you are kind of thick through the middle for your legs; kind of big behind for them.”

“Well, why not? I didn’t make it like that, did I?”

“Oh, sure. I guess it’s all right if you like it to be that way.”

Without apparent effort Jenny dislocated her hip and stared downward over her shoulder. Then she turned sideways and accepted the mute proffering of the mirror. Reassured, she said: “Sure, it’s all right. I expect to be bigger than that, in front, some day.”

“So do I . . . when I have to. But what do you want one for?”

“Lord,” said Jenny, “I guess I’ll have a whole litter of ’em. Besides, I think they’re kind of cute, don’t you?”

The sound of the victrola came down, melodious and nasal, and measured feet marked away the lapping of waves. The light was small and inadequate, sunk into the ceiling, and Jenny and the niece agreed that they were kind of cute and pink. Jenny was quite palpably on the point of coming to bed and the other said:

“Don’t you wear any nightclothes?”

“I can’t wear that thing Mrs. What’s-her-name lent me,” Jenny replied. “You said you were going to lend me something, only you didn’t. If I’d depended on you on this trip, I guess I’d be back yonder about ten miles, trying to swim home.”

“That’s right. But it doesn’t make any difference what you sleep in, does it? . . . Turn off the light.” Light followed Jenny rosily as she crossed the room, it slid rosily upon her as she turned obediently toward the switch beside the door. The niece lay flat on her back gazing at the unshaded globe. Jenny’s angelic nakedness went beyond her vision and suddenly she stared at nothing with a vague orifice vaguely in the center of it, and beyond the orifice a pale moonfilled sky.

Jenny’s bare feet hissed just a little on the uncarpeted floor and she came breathing softly in the dark, and her hand came out of the dark. The niece moved over against the wall. The round orifice in the center of the dark was obscured, then it reappeared, and breathing with a soft blonde intentness Jenny climbed gingerly into the berth. But she bumped her head anyway, lightly, and she exclaimed “ow” with placid surprise. The bunk heaved monstrously, creaking; the porthole vanished again, then the berth became still and Jenny sighed with a soft explosive sound.

Then she changed her position again and the other said: “Be still, can’t you?” thrusting at Jenny’s boneless, naked abandon with her elbow.

“I’m not fixed yet,” Jenny replied without rancor.

“Well, get in then, and quit flopping around.”

Jenny became lax. “I’m fixed now,” she said at last. She sighed again, a frank yawning sound.

Those slightly dulled feet thudthudded monotonously overhead. Outside, in the pale darkness, water lapped at the hull of the yacht. The close cabin emptied slowly of heat; heat ebbed steadily away now that the light was off, and in it was no sound save that of their breathing. No other sound at all. “I hope that was the last one, the one I killed,” Jenny murmured.

“God, yes,” the niece agreed. “This party is wearing enough with just people on it. . . . Say, how’d you like to be on a party with a boatful of Mr. Talliaferros?”

“Which one is he?”

“Why, don’t you remember him? You sure ought to. He’s that funny talking little man that puts his hands on you—that dreadful polite one. I don’t see how you could forget a man as polite as him.”

“Oh, yes,” said Jenny, remembering, and the other said:

“Say, Jenny, how about Pete?”

Jenny became utterly still for a moment. Then she said innocently: “What about him?”

“He’s mad at you about Mr. Talliaferro, isn’t he?”

“Pete’s all right, I guess.”

“You keep yourself all cluttered up with men, don’t you?” the other asked curiously.

“Well, you got to do something,” Jenny defended herself.

“Bunk,” the niece said roughly, “bunk. You like petting. That’s the reason. Don’t you?”

“Well, I don’t mind,” Jenny answered. “I’ve kind of got used to it,” she explained. The niece expelled her breath in a thin snorting sound and Jenny repeated: “You’ve got to do something, haven’t you?”

“Oh, sweet attar of bunk,” the niece said. In the darkness she made a gesture of disgust. “You women! That’s the way Dorothy Jameson thinks about it too, I bet. You better look out: I think she’s trying to take Peter away from you.”

“Oh, Pete’s all right,” Jenny repeated placidly. She lay perfectly still again. The water was a cool dim sound. Jenny spoke, suddenly confidential.

“Say, you know what she wants Pete to do?”

“No: What?” asked the niece quickly.

“Well— Say, what kind of a girl is she? Do you know her very good?”

“What does she want Pete to do?” the other insisted.

Jenny was silent. Then she blurted in prim disapproval: “She wants Pete to let her paint him.”

“Yes? And then what?”

“That’s it. She wants Pete to let her paint him in a picture.”

“Well, that’s the way she usually goes about getting men, I guess. What’s wrong with it?”

“Well, it’s the wrong way to go about getting Pete. Pete’s not used to that,” Jenny replied in that prim tone.

“I don’t blame him for not wanting to waste his time that way. But what makes you and Pete so surprised at the idea of it? Pete won’t catch lead poisoning just from having his portrait painted.”

“Well, it may be all right for folks like you all. But Pete says he wouldn’t let any strange woman see him without any clothes on. He’s not used to things like that.”

“Oh,” remarked the niece. Then: “So that’s the way she wants to paint him, is it?”

“Why, that’s the way they always do it, ain’t it? In the nude?” Jenny pronounced it nood.

“Good Lord, didn’t you ever see a picture of anybody with clothes on? Where’d you get that idea from? From the movies?”

Jenny didn’t reply. Then she said suddenly: “Besides, the ones with clothes on are all old ladies, or mayors or something. Anyway, I thought . . .”

“Thought what?”

“Nothing,” Jenny answered, and the other said:

“Pete can get that idea right out of his head. Chances are she wants to paint him all regular and respectable, not to shock his modesty at all. I’ll tell him so, to-morrow.”

“Never mind,” Jenny said quickly, “I’ll tell him. You needn’t to bother about it.”

“All right. Whatever you like. . . . Wish I had a cigarette.” They lay quiet for a time. Outside water whispered against the hull. The victrola was hushed temporarily and the dancers had ceased. Jenny moved again, onto her side, facing the other in the darkness.

“Say,” she asked, “what’s your brother making?”

“Gus? Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

“I did, only . . .”

“What?”

“Only he didn’t tell me. At least, I don’t remember.”

“What did he say when you asked him?”

Jenny mused briefly. “He kissed me. Before I knew it, and he kind of patted me back here and told me to call again later, because he was in conference or something like that.”

“Gabriel’s pants,” the niece murmured. Then she said sharply: “Look here, you leave Josh alone, you hear? Haven’t you got enough with Pete and Mr. Talliaferro, without fooling with children?”

“I’m not going to fool with any children.”

“Well, please don’t. Let Josh alone, anyway.” She moved her arm, arching her elbow against Jenny’s soft nakedness. “Move over some. Gee, woman, you sure do feel indecent. Get over on your side a little, can’t you?”

Jenny moved away, rolling onto her back again, and they lay quiet, side by side in the dark. “Say,” remarked Jenny presently, “Mr.—that polite man—” “Talliaferro,” the other prompted. “—Talliaferro. I wonder if he’s got a car?”

“I don’t know. You better ask him. What do you keep on asking me what people are making or what they’ve got, for?”

“Taxicabbers are best, I think,” Jenny continued, unruffled. “Sometimes when they have cars they don’t have anything else. They just take you riding.”

“I don’t know,” the niece repeated. “Say,” she said suddenly, “what was that you said to him this afternoon?”

Jenny said, “Oh.” She breathed placidly and regularly for a while. Then she remarked: “I thought you were there, around that corner.”

“Yes. What was it? Say it again.” Jenny said it again. The niece repeated it after her. “What does it mean?”

“I don’t know. I just happened to remember it. I don’t know what it means.”

“It sounds good,” the other said. “You didn’t think it up yourself, did you?”

“No. It was a fellow told it to me. There was two couples of us at the Market one night, getting coffee: me and Pete and a girl friend of mine and another fellow. We had been to Mandeville on the boat that day, swimming and dancing. Say, there was a man drownded at Mandeville that day. Pete and Thelma, my girl friend, and Roy, this girl friend of mine’s fellow, saw it. I didn’t see it because I wasn’t with them. I didn’t go in bathing with them: it was too sunny. I don’t think blondes ought to expose themselves to hot sun like brunettes, do you?”

“Why not? But what about—”

“Oh, yes. Anyway, I didn’t go in swimming where the man got drownded. I was waiting for them, and I got to talking to a funny man. A little kind of black man—”

“A nigger?”

“No. He was a white man, except he was awful sunburned and kind of shabby dressed—no necktie and hat. Say, he said some funny things to me. He said I had the best digestion he ever saw, and he said if the straps of my dress was to break I’d devastate the country. He said he was a liar by profession, and he made good money at it, enough to own a Ford as soon as he got it paid out. I think he was crazy. Not dangerous: just crazy.”

The niece lay quiet. She said, contemplatively: “You do look like they feed you on bread and milk and put you to bed at sunset every day. . . . What was his name? Did he tell you?” she asked suddenly.

“Yes. It was . . .” Jenny pondered a while. “I remembered it because he was such a funny kind of man. It was . . . Walker or Foster or something.”

“Walker or Foster? Well, which one was it?”

“It must be Foster because I remembered it by it began with a F like my girl friend’s middle name—Frances. Thelma Frances, only she don’t use both of them. Only I don’t think it was Foster, because—”

“You don’t remember it, then.”

“Yes, I do. Wait. . . . Oh, yes: I remember—Faulkner, that was it.”

“Faulkner?” the niece pondered in turn. “Never heard of him,” she said at last, with finality. “And he was the one that told you that thing?”

“No. It was after that, when we had come back to N.O. That crazy man was on the boat coming back. He got to talking to Pete and Roy while me and Thelma was fixing up downstairs, and he danced with Thelma. He wouldn’t dance with me because he said he didn’t dance very well, and so he had to keep his mind on the music while he danced. He said he could dance with either Roy or Thelma or Pete, but he couldn’t dance with me. I think he was crazy. Don’t you?”

“It all sounds crazy, the way you tell it. But what about the one that said that to you?”

“Oh, yes. Well, we was at the Market. There was a big crowd there because it was Sunday night, see, and these other fellows was there. One of them was a snappy looking fellow, and I kind of looked at him. Pete had stopped in a place to get some cigarettes, and me and Thelma and Roy was crowded in with a lot of folks, having coffee. So I kind of looked at this goodlooking fellow.”

“Yes. You kind of looked at him. Go on.”

“All right. And so this goodlooking fellow crowded in behind me and started talking to me. There was a man in between me and Roy, and this fellow that was talking to me said, Is he with you? talking about the man sitting next to me, and I said, No, I didn’t know who he was. And this fellow said, How about coming out with him because he had his car parked outside . . . Pete’s brother has a lot of cars. One of them is the same as Pete’s . . . And then . . . Oh, yes, and I said, where will we go, because my old man didn’t like for me to go out with strangers, and the fellow said he wasn’t a stranger, that anybody could tell me who some name was, I forgot what it was he said his name was. And I said he better ask Pete if I could go, and he said, Who was Pete? Well, there was a big man standing near where we was. He was big as a stevedore, and just then this big man happened to look at me again. He looked at me a minute, and I kind of knew that he’d look at me again pretty soon, so I told this fellow talking to me that he was Pete, and when the big man looked somewheres else a minute this fellow said that to me. And then the big man looked at me again, and the fellow that said that to me kind of went away. So I got up and went to where Thelma and Roy was, and pretty soon Pete came back. And that’s how I learned it.”

“Well, it sure sounds good. I wonder . . . Say, let me say it sometimes, will you?”

“All right,” Jenny agreed. “You can have it. Say, what’s that you keep telling your aunt? something about pulling up the sheet or something?” The niece told her. “That sounds good, too,” Jenny said magnanimously.

“Does it? I tell you what: You let me use yours sometime, and you can take mine. How about it?”

“All right,” Jenny agreed again, “it’s a trade.”

Water lapped and whispered ceaselessly in the pale darkness. The curve of the low ceiling directly over the berth lent a faint sense of oppression to the cabin, but this sense of oppression faded out into the comparatively greater spaciousness of the room, of the darkness with a round orifice vaguely in the center of it. The moon was higher and the lower curve of the brass rim of the port was now a thin silver sickle, like a new moon.

Jenny moved again, turning against the other’s side, breathing ineffably across the niece’s face. The niece lay with Jenny’s passive nakedness against her arm, and moving her arm outward from the elbow she slowly stroked the back of her hand along the swell of Jenny’s flank. Slowly, back and forth, while Jenny lay supine and receptive as a cat. Slowly, back and forth and back . . . “I like flesh,” the niece murmured. “Warm and smooth. Wish I’d lived in Rome . . . oiled gladiators. . . . Jenny,” she said abruptly, “are you a virgin?”

“Of course I am,” Jenny answered immediately in a startled tone. She lay for a moment in lax astonishment. “I mean,” she said, “I—yes. I mean, yes, of course I am.” She brooded in passive surprise, then her body lost its laxness. “Say—”

“Well,” the niece agreed judicially, “I guess that’s about what I’d have said, myself.”

“Say,” demanded Jenny, thoroughly aroused, “what did you ask me that for?”

“Just to see what you’d say. It doesn’t make any difference, you know, whether you are or not. I know lots of girls that say they’re not. I don’t think all of ’em are lying, either.”

“Maybe it don’t to some folks,” Jenny rejoined primly, “but I don’t approve of it. I think a girl loses a man’s respect by pom—prom—I don’t approve of it, that’s all. And I don’t think you had any right to ask me.”

“Good Lord, you sound like a girl scout or something. Don’t Pete ever try to persuade you otherwise?”

“Say, what’re you asking me questions like that for?”

“I just wanted to see what you’d say. I don’t think it’s anything to tear your shirt over. You’re too easily shocked, Jenny,” the niece informed her.

“Well, who wouldn’t be? If you want to know what folks say when you ask ’em things like that, why don’t you ask ’em to yourself? Did anybody ever ask you if you were one?”

“Not that I know of. But I wou—”

“Well, are you?”

The niece lay perfectly still a moment. “Am I what?”

“Are you a virgin?”

“Why, of course I am,” she answered sharply. She raised herself on her elbow. “I mean— Say, look here—”

“Well, that’s what I’d ’a’ said, myself,” Jenny responded with placid malice from the darkness.

The niece poised on her tense elbow above Jenny’s sweet regular breathing. “Anyway, what bus—I mean— You asked me so quick,” she rushed on, “I wasn’t even thinking about being asked something like that.”

“Neither was I. You asked me quicker than I asked you.”

“But that was different. We were talking about you being one. We were not even thinking about me being one. You asked it so quick I had to say that. It wasn’t fair.”

“So did I have to say what I said. It was as fair for you as it was for me.”

“No, it was different. I had to say I wasn’t: quick, like that.”

“Well, I’ll ask it when you’re not surprised, then. Are you?”

The niece lay quiet for a time. “You mean, sure enough?”

“Yes.” Jenny breathed her warm intent breath across the other’s face.

The niece lay silent again. After a time she said: “Hell,” and then: “Yes, I am. It’s not worth lying about.”

“That’s what I think,” Jenny agreed smugly. She became placidly silent in the darkness. The other waited a moment, then said sharply:

“Well? Are you one?”

“Sure I am.”

“I mean, sure enough. You said sure enough, didn’t you?”

“Sure, I am,” Jenny repeated.

“You’re not playing fair,” the niece accused, “I told you.”

“Well, I told you, too.”

“Honest? You swear?”

“Sure, I am,” Jenny said again with her glib and devastating placidity.

The niece said, “Hell.” She snorted thinly.

They lay quiet, side by side. They were quiet on deck, too, but it seemed as though there still lingered in the darkness a thin stubborn ghost of syncopation and thudding tireless feet. Jenny wiggled her free toes with pleasure. Presently she said:

“You’re mad, ain’t you?” No reply. “You’ve got a good figure, too,” Jenny offered, conciliatory. “I think you’ve got a right sweet little shape.”

But the other refused to be cajoled. Jenny sighed again ineffably, her milk-and-honey breath. She said: “Your brother’s a college boy, ain’t he? I know some college boys. Tulane. I think college boys are cute. They don’t dress as well as Pete . . . sloppy.” She mused for a time. “I wore a frat pin once, for a couple of days. I guess your brother belongs to it, don’t he?”

“Gus? Belong to one of these jerkwater clubs? I guess not. He’s a Yale man—he will be next month, that is. I’m going with him. They don’t take every Tom, Dick and Harry that shows up in up there. You have to wait until sophomore year. But Gus is going to work for a senior society, anyhow. He don’t think much of fraternities. Gee, you’d sure give him a laugh if he could hear you.”

“Well, I didn’t know. It seems to me one thing you join is about like another. What’s he going to get by joining the one he’s going to join?”

“You don’t get anything, stupid. You just join it.”

Jenny pondered this a while. “And you have to work to join it?”

“Three years. And only a few make it, then.”

“And if you do make it, you don’t get anything except a little button or something? Good Lord . . . Say, you know what I’m going to tell him to-morrow? I’m going to tell him he better hold up the sheet: he’s—he’s— What’s the rest of it?”

“Oh shut up and get over on your side,” the niece said sharply, turning her back. “You don’t understand anything about it.”

“I sure don’t,” Jenny agreed, rolling away and onto her other side, and they lay with their backs to each other and their behinds just touching, as children do. . . . “Three years . . . Good Lord.”

.          .          .          .          .          .          .

Fairchild had not returned. But she had known they would not: she was not even surprised, and so once more her party had evolved into interminable cards. Mrs. Wiseman, herself, Mr. Talliaferro and Mark. By craning her neck she could see Dorothy Jameson’s frail humorless intentness and the tawdry sophistication of Jenny’s young man where they swung their legs from the roof of the wheelhouse. The moon was getting up and Pete’s straw hat was a dull implacable gleam slanted above the red eye of his eternal cigarette. And, yes, there was that queer, shy, shabby Mr. Gordon, mooning alone, as usual; and again she felt a stab of reproof for having neglected him. At least the others seemed to be enjoying the voyage, however trying they might be to one another. But what could she do for him? He was so difficult, so ill at ease whenever she extended herself for him . . . Mrs. Maurier rose.

“For a while,” she explained; “Mr. Gordon . . the trials of a hostess, you know. You might play dummy until I—no: wait.” She called Dorothy with saccharine insistence and presently Miss Jameson responded. “Won’t you take my hand for a short time? I’m sure the young gentleman will excuse you.”

“I’m sorry,” Miss Jameson called back. “I have a headache. Please excuse me.”

“Go on, Mrs. Maurier,” Mrs. Wiseman said, “we can pass the time until you come back: we’ve got used to sitting around.”

“Yes, do,” Mr. Talliaferro added, “we understand.”

Mrs. Maurier looked over to where Gordon still leaned his tall body upon the rail. “I really must,” she explained again. “It’s such a comfort to have a few on whom I can depend.”

“Yes, do,” Mr. Talliaferro repeated.

When she had gone Mrs. Wiseman said: “Let’s play red dog for pennies. I’ve got a few dollars left.”

.          .          .          .          .          .          .

She joined him quietly. He glanced his gaunt face at her, glanced away. “How quiet, how peaceful it is,” she began, undeterred, leaning beside him and gazing also out across the restless slumber of water upon which the worn moon spread her ceaseless peacock’s tail like a train of silver sequins. In the yet level rays of the moon the man’s face was spare and cavernous, haughty and inhuman almost. He doesn’t get enough to eat, she knew suddenly and infallibly. It’s like a silver faun’s face, she thought. But he is so difficult, so shy. . . . “So few of us take time to look inward and contemplate ourselves, don’t you think? It’s the life we lead, I suppose. Only he who creates has not lost the art of this: of making his life complete by living within himself. Don’t you think so, Mr. Gordon?”

“Yes,” he answered shortly. Beyond the dimensionless curve of the deck on which he stood he could see, forward and downward, the stem of the yacht: a pure triangle of sheer white with small waves lapping at its horizontal leg, breaking and flashing each with its particle of shattered moonlight, making a ceaseless small whispering. Mrs. Maurier moved her hands in a gesture: moonlight smoldered greenly amid her rings.

“To live within yourself, to be sufficient unto yourself. There is so much unhappiness in the world . . .” she sighed again with astonishment. “To go through life, keeping yourself from becoming involved in it, to gather inspiration for your Work—ah, Mr. Gordon, how lucky you who create are. As for we others, the best we can hope is that sometime, somewhere, somehow we may be fortunate enough to furnish that inspiration, or the setting for it, at least. But, after all, that would be an end in itself, I think. To know that one had given her mite to Art, no matter how humble the mite or the giver . . . The humble laborer, Mr. Gordon: she, too, has her place in the scheme of things; she, too, has given something to the world, has walked where gods have trod. And I do so hope that you will find on this voyage something to compensate you for having been taken away from your Work.”

“Yes,” said Gordon again, staring at her with his arrogant uncomfortable stare. The man looks positively uncanny, she thought with a queer cold feeling within her. Like an animal, a beast of some sort. Her own gaze fluttered away and despite herself she glanced quickly over her shoulder to the reassuring group at the card table. Dorothy’s and Jenny’s young man’s legs swung innocent and rhythmic from the top of the wheelhouse, and as she looked Pete snapped his cigarette outward and into the dark water, twinkling.

“But to be a world in oneself, to regard the antics of man as one would a puppet show—ah, Mr. Gordon, how happy you must be.”

“Yes,” he repeated. Sufficient unto himself in the city of his arrogance, in the marble tower of his loneliness and pride, and . . . She coming into the dark sky of his life like a star, like a flame . . . O bitter and new . . . Somewhere within him was a far dreadful laughter, unheard; his whole life was become toothed with jeering laughter, and he faced the old woman again, putting his hand on her and turning her face upward into the moonlight. Mrs. Maurier knew utter fear. Not fright, fear: a passive and tragic condition like a dream. She whispered Mr. Gordon, but made no sound.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said harshly, staring at her face as a surgeon might. “Tell me about her,” he commanded. “Why aren’t you her mother, so you could tell me how conceiving her must have been, how carrying her in your loins must have been?”

Mr. Gordon! she implored through her dry lips, without making a sound. His hand moved over her face, learning the bones of her forehead and eyesockets and nose through her flesh.

“There’s something in your face, something behind all this silliness,” he went on in his cold level voice while an interval of frozen time refused to pass. His hand pinched the loose sag of flesh around her mouth, slid along the fading line of her cheek and jaw. “I suppose you’ve had what you call your sorrows, too, haven’t you?”

“Mr. Gordon!” she said at last, finding her voice. He released her as abruptly and stood over her, gaunt and ill nourished and arrogant in the moonlight while she believed she was going to faint, hoping vaguely that he would make some effort to catch her when she did, knowing that he would not do so. But she didn’t faint, and the moon spread her silver and boneless hand on the water, and the water lapped and lapped at the pure dreaming hull of the Nausikaa with a faint whispering sound.