“Perhaps—?” she said at length, upon which they rose and left, vaguely to the surprise of the gentlemen, who had either thought them attentive or had forgotten their presence.

“Ah, one could tell strange stories of the old days,” they heard Ridley say, as he sank into his chair again.  Glancing back, at the doorway, they saw Mr. Pepper as though he had suddenly loosened his clothes, and had become a vivacious and malicious old ape.

Winding veils round their heads, the women walked on deck.  They were now moving steadily down the river, passing the dark shapes of ships at anchor, and London was a swarm of lights with a pale yellow canopy drooping above it.  There were the lights of the great theatres, the lights of the long streets, lights that indicated huge squares of domestic comfort, lights that hung high in air.  No darkness would ever settle upon those lamps, as no darkness had settled upon them for hundreds of years.  It seemed dreadful that the town should blaze for ever in the same spot; dreadful at least to people going away to adventure upon the sea, and beholding it as a circumscribed mound, eternally burnt, eternally scarred.  From the deck of the ship the great city appeared a crouched and cowardly figure, a sedentary miser.

Leaning over the rail, side by side, Helen said, “Won’t you be cold?” Rachel replied, “No. . . .  How beautiful!” she added a moment later.  Very little was visible—­a few masts, a shadow of land here, a line of brilliant windows there.  They tried to make head against the wind.

“It blows—­it blows!” gasped Rachel, the words rammed down her throat.  Struggling by her side, Helen was suddenly overcome by the spirit of movement, and pushed along with her skirts wrapping themselves round her knees, and both arms to her hair.  But slowly the intoxication of movement died down, and the wind became rough and chilly.  They looked through a chink in the blind and saw that long cigars were being smoked in the dining-room; they saw Mr. Ambrose throw himself violently against the back of his chair, while Mr. Pepper crinkled his cheeks as though they had been cut in wood.  The ghost of a roar of laughter came out to them, and was drowned at once in the wind.  In the dry yellow-lighted room Mr. Pepper and Mr. Ambrose were oblivious of all tumult; they were in Cambridge, and it was probably about the year 1875.

“They’re old friends,” said Helen, smiling at the sight.  “Now, is there a room for us to sit in?”

Rachel opened a door.

“It’s more like a landing than a room,” she said.  Indeed it had nothing of the shut stationary character of a room on shore.  A table was rooted in the middle, and seats were stuck to the sides.  Happily the tropical suns had bleached the tapestries to a faded blue-green colour, and the mirror with its frame of shells, the work of the steward’s love, when the time hung heavy in the southern seas, was quaint rather than ugly.  Twisted shells with