The next moment, angry with himself for the boast, he had gripped the arms of the chair so savagely that every finger-end was stinging.  At the same moment he became aware that a woman was entering the room.  He saw the girl leave her chair and trip swiftly across the floor to the newcomer.  They kissed each other, and, with arms around each other’s waists, they advanced toward him.  That must be her mother, he thought.  She was a tall, blond woman, slender, and stately, and beautiful.  Her gown was what he might expect in such a house.  His eyes delighted in the graceful lines of it.  She and her dress together reminded him of women on the stage.  Then he remembered seeing similar grand ladies and gowns entering the London theatres while he stood and watched and the policemen shoved him back into the drizzle beyond the awning.  Next his mind leaped to the Grand Hotel at Yokohama, where, too, from the sidewalk, he had seen grand ladies.  Then the city and the harbor of Yokohama, in a thousand pictures, began flashing before his eyes.  But he swiftly dismissed the kaleidoscope of memory, oppressed by the urgent need of the present.  He knew that he must stand up to be introduced, and he struggled painfully to his feet, where he stood with trousers bagging at the knees, his arms loose-hanging and ludicrous, his face set hard for the impending ordeal.

CHAPTER II

The process of getting into the dining room was a nightmare to him.  Between halts and stumbles, jerks and lurches, locomotion had at times seemed impossible.  But at last he had made it, and was seated alongside of Her.  The array of knives and forks frightened him.  They bristled with unknown perils, and he gazed at them, fascinated, till their dazzle became a background across which moved a succession of forecastle pictures, wherein he and his mates sat eating salt beef with sheath-knives and fingers, or scooping thick pea-soup out of pannikins by means of battered iron spoons.  The stench of bad beef was in his nostrils, while in his ears, to the accompaniment of creaking timbers and groaning bulkheads, echoed the loud mouth-noises of the eaters.  He watched them eating, and decided that they ate like pigs.  Well, he would be careful here.  He would make no noise.  He would keep his mind upon it all the time.

He glanced around the table.  Opposite him was Arthur, and Arthur’s brother, Norman.  They were her brothers, he reminded himself, and his heart warmed toward them.  How they loved each other, the members of this family!  There flashed into his mind the picture of her mother, of the kiss of greeting, and of the pair of them walking toward him with arms entwined.  Not in his world were such displays of affection between parents and children made.  It was a revelation of the heights of existence that were attained in the world above.  It was the finest thing yet that he had seen in this