“Do you know, my dear,” said Madame Piriac in French, “I have an idea.  You will tell me if it is not good....  If we shared this cabin...!  In this so curious machine one feels a satisfaction, somehow, in being very near the one to the other.  The ceiling is so low....  That gives you sensations—­human sensations....  I know not if you experience the same....”

“Oh!  Let’s!” Audrey exclaimed impulsively in English.  “Do let’s!”

When the parlourmaid had gone, and before the luggage had come down, Madame Piriac caught Audrey to her and kissed her fervently on both cheeks, amid the glinting confusion of polished woods and draperies and silver mountings and bevelled glass.

“I am so content that you came, my little one!” murmured Madame Piriac.

The next minute the cabin and the corridor outside were full of open trunks and bags, over which bent the forms of Madame Piriac, Audrey and the parlourmaid.  And all the drawers were gaping, and the doors of all the cupboards swinging, and the narrow beds were hidden under piles of variegated garments.  And while they were engaged in the breathless business of installing themselves in the celestial domain, strange new thoughts flitted about like mice in Audrey’s head.  She felt as though she were in a refuge from the world, and as though her conscience was being narcotised.  In that cabin, firm as solid land and yet floating on the water, with Mr. Gilman at hand her absolute slave—­in that cabin the propaganda of women’s suffrage presented itself as a very odd and very remote phenomenon, a phenomenon scarcely real.  She had positively everything she wanted without fighting for it.  The lion’s share of life was hers.  Comfort and luxury were desirable and beautiful things, not to be cast aside nor scorned.  Madame Piriac was a wise woman and a good woman.  She was a happy woman....  There was a great deal of ugliness in sitting on Joy Wheels and being chased by policemen.  True, as she had heard, a crew of nineteen human beings was necessary to the existence of Mr. Gilman and his guests on board the yacht.  Well, what then?  The nineteen were undoubtedly well treated and in clover.  And the world was the world; you had to take it as you found it....  And then in her mind she had a glimpse of the blissful face of Jane Foley—­blissful in a different way from any other face she had met in all her life.  Disconcerting, this glimpse, for an instant, but only for an instant!  She, Audrey, was blissful, too.  The intense desire for joy and pleasure surged up in her....  The bell which she had previously heard struck three; its delicate note vibrated long through the yacht, unwilling to expire.  Half-past nine, and supper and the chivalry of Mr. Gilman waiting for them in the elegance of the saloon!

As the two women approached the portiere which screened the forward entrance to the saloon, they heard Mr. Gilman say, in a weary and resigned voice: