“I say,” said Mr. Talliaferro, popping briskly and cautiously into the room, accepting his glass, “we’d better slow up a bit, hadn’t we?”

“What for?” asked the Semitic man, and Fairchild said:

“Ah, it’s all right. She expects it of us. Somebody’s got to be the hoi polloi, you know. Besides, we want to make this cruise memorable in the annals of deep water. Hey, Major? Talliaferro’d better go easy, though.”

“Oh, well look out for Talliaferro,” the Semitic man said.

“No damned fear,” Major Ayers assured him. “Have a go, eh?” They all had a go. Then they rushed back on deck.

.          .          .          .          .          .          .

“What do you do in New Orleans, Pete?” Miss Jameson asked intensely.

“One thing and another,” Pete answered cautiously. “I’m in business with my brother,” he added.

“You have lots of friends, I imagine? Girls would all like to dance with you. You are one of the best dancers I ever saw—almost a professional. I like dancing.”

“Yeh,” Pete agreed. He was restive. “I guess—”

“I wonder if you and I couldn’t get together some evening and dance again? I don’t go to night clubs much, because none of the men I know dance very well. But I’d enjoy it, with you.”

“I guess so,” Pete answered. “Well, I—”

“I’ll give you my phone number and address, and you call me soon, will you? You might come out to dinner, and we’ll go out afterward, you know.”

“Sure,” Pete answered uncomfortably. He removed his hat and examined the crown. Then he slanted it once more across his dark reckless head. Miss Jameson said:

“Do you ever make dates ahead of time, Pete?”

“Naw,” he answered quickly. “I wouldn’t have a date over a day old. I just call ’em up and take ’em out and bring ’em back in time to go to work next day. I wouldn’t have one I had to wait until to-morrow on.”

“Neither do I. So I tell you what: let’s break the rule one time, and make a date for the first night we are ashore—what do you say? You come out to dinner at my house, and we’ll go out later to dance. I’ve got a car.”

“I— Well, you see—”

“We’ll just do that,” Miss Jameson continued remorselessly. “We won’t forget that; it’s a promise, isn’t it?”

Pete rose. “I guess we—I guess I better not promise. Something might turn up so I—we couldn’t make it. I guess . . .” She sat quietly, looking at him. “Maybe it’ll be better to wait and fix it up when we get back. I might have to be out of town or something that day, see? Maybe we better wait and see how things shape up.” Still she said nothing, and presently she removed her patient humorless eyes and looked out across the darkling water, and Pete stood uncomfortably with his goading urge to keep on saying something. “I guess we better wait and see later, see?”

Her head was turned away, so he departed unostentatiously. He paused again and looked back at her. She gazed still out over the water: an uncomplaining abjectness of passivity, quiet in her shadowed chair.

.          .          .          .          .          .          .

As he embraced her, Jenny removed his hat slanted viciously upon his reckless head, and examined the broken crown with a recurrence of soft astonishment; and still holding the hat in her hand she came to him in a flowing enveloping movement, without seeming to move at all. Their faces merged and Jenny was immediately utterly boneless, seeming to suspend her merging rifeness by her soft mouth, then she opened her mouth against his . . . after a while Pete raised his head, Jenny’s face was a passive drowsing blur rich, ineffably rich, in the dark; and Pete got out his unfresh handkerchief and wiped her mouth, quite gently.

“Got over it without leaving a scar, didn’t you?” he said. Without volition they swung in a world unseen and warm as water, unseen and rife and beautiful, strange and hushed and grave beneath that waning moon of decay and death. . . . “Give your old man a kiss, kid. . . .”

.          .          .          .          .          .          .

The niece entered her aunt’s room, without knocking. Mrs. Maurier raised her astonished, shrieking face and dragged a garment shapelessly across her recently uncorseted breast, as women do. When she had partially recovered from the shock she ran heavily to the door and locked it.

“It’s just me,” the niece said. “Say, Aunt Pat—”

Her aunt gasped: her breast and chins billowed unconfined. “Why don’t you knock? You should never enter a room like that. Doesn’t Henry ever—”

“Sure he does,” the niece interrupted, “all the time. Say, Aunt Pat, Pete thinks you ought to pay him for his hat. For stepping on it, you know.”

Her aunt stared at her. “What?”

“You stepped through Pete’s hat. He and Jenny think you ought to pay for it. Or offer to, anyway. I expect if you’d offer to, he wouldn’t take it.”

“Thinks I ought to p—” Mrs. Maurier’s voice faded into a shocked, soundless amazement.

“Yes, they think so. . . . I mentioned it because I promised them I would. You don’t have to unless you want to, you know.”

“Thinks I ought to p—” Again Mrs. Maurier’s voice failed her, and her amazement became a chaotic thing that filled her round face interestingly. Then it froze into something definite: a coldly determined displeasure, and she recovered her voice.

“I have lodged and fed these people for a week,” she said without humor. “I do not feel that I am called upon to clothe them also.”

“Well, I just mentioned it because I promised,” the niece repeated soothingly.

.          .          .          .          .          .          .

Mrs. Maurier, Jenny and the niece had disappeared, to Mr. Talliaferro’s mixed relief. They still had two left, however. They took turn about with them.

Major Ayers, Fairchild and the Semitic man rushed below again. Mr. Talliaferro following openly this time, and a trifle erratically.

“How’s it coming along?” Fairchild asked, poising the bottle. Mr. Talliaferro made a wet deprecating sound, glancing at the other two. They regarded him with kindly interest. “Oh, they’re all right,” Fairchild reassured him. “They are as anxious to see you put it over as I am.” He set the bottle down well within reach, and gulped at his glass. “I tell you what, it’s boldness that does the trick with women, ain’t it, Major?”

“Right you are. Boldness: dash in; take ’em by storm.”

“Sure. That’s what you want to do. Have another drink.” He filled Mr. Talliaferro’s glass.

“That’s my plan, exactly. Boldness. Boldness. Boldness.” Mr. Talliaferro stared at the other glassily. He tried to wink. “Didn’t you see me dancing with her?”

“Yes, but that ain’t bold enough. If I were you, if I were doing it, I’d turn the trick to-night, now. Say, Julius, you know what I’d do? I’d go right to her room: walk right in. He’s been dancing with her and talking to her: ground already broken, you see. I bet she’s in there right now, waiting for him, hoping he is bold enough to come in to her. He’ll feel pretty cheap to-morrow when he finds he missed his chance, won’t he? You never have but one chance with a woman, you know. If you fail her then, she’s done with you—the next man that comes along gets her without a struggle. It ain’t the man a woman cares for that reaps the harvest of passion, you know: it’s the next man that comes along after she’s lost the other one. I’d sure hate to think I’d been doing work for somebody else to get the benefit of. Wouldn’t you?”

Mr. Talliaferro stared at him. He swallowed twice. “But suppose, just suppose, that she isn’t expecting me.”

“Oh, sure. Of course, you’ve got to take that risk. It would take a bold man, anyway, to walk right in her room, walk right in without knocking and go straight to the bed. But how many women would resist? I wouldn’t, if I were a woman. If you were her, Talliaferro, would you resist? I’ve found,” he went on, “that boldness gets pretty near anything, in this world, especially women. But it takes a bold man. . . . Say, I bet Major Ayers would do it.”

“Right you are. I’d walk right in, by Jove. . . . I say, I think I shall, anyway. Which one is it? Not the old one?”

“All right. That is, if Talliaferro don’t want to do it. He has first shot, you know: he’s done all the heavy preparatory work. But it takes a bold man.”

“Oh, Talliaferro’s bold as any man,” the Semitic man said.

“But, really,” Mr. Talliaferro repeated, “suppose she isn’t expecting me. Suppose she were to call out—No, no.”

“Yes, Talliaferro ain’t bold enough. We better let Major Ayers go, after all. No necessity for disappointing the girl, at least.”

“Besides,” Mr. Talliaferro added quickly, “she is in a room with some one else.”

“No, she ain’t. She’s in a room to herself, now; that one at the end of the hall.”

“That’s Mrs. Maurier’s room,” Mr. Talliaferro said, staring at him.

“No, no; she changed. That room has a broken screen, so she changed. Julius and I were helping her move this afternoon. Weren’t we, Julius? That’s how I happen to know Jenny’s in there now.”

“But, really—” Mr. Talliaferro swallowed again. “Are you sure that’s her room? This is a serious matter, you know.”

“Have another drink,” Fairchild said.